Housing Rebellion campaigner Grace Lally [Alice Horsley]

• THANK you to the CNJ for an excellent New Year’s edition focusing on what we can do about the climate and ecological crisis.

We would like to pick out a few themes…

Retrofit, don’t demolish.

We agree with Grace Lally of Housing Rebellion (‘Demolition isn’t the solution if we want homes fit for the future’).

The proposed demolition and rebuilding of good homes by Camden Council (at Wendling estate in Gospel Oak) and by housing associations such as Origin Housing (at Juniper Crescent and Gilbey’s Yard) causes a massive amount of carbon emissions without benefiting residents.

It is meant to turn a profit from which landlords can maintain their stock, but doesn’t address the current crisis in housing maintenance, which demands to be dealt with now.

These so-called “regeneration” projects won’t be built for decades and in the meantime residents are left with a backlog of unsolved issues impacting on their living conditions and health, including damp and mould from leaking roofs and broken-down ventilation systems.

We are pleased to hear that Camden Council proposes to bring more of its roof maintenance work “in-house” (rather than contracting it out), as this should speed up the work and make it cheaper. But to conform with legal obligations and deal with the mould and damp, roofs must be insulated at the same time.

And more needs to be done to help all residents living in badly-maintained rented accommodation. We understand that Housing Rebellion will be holding some workshops about this in the near future (please email us and we can put you in touch).

Estate heating systems.

The residents of Alexandra and Ainsworth Estate (Why innovative estate’s heating system is stuck in the past) have been struggling to get their voices heard.

They want to push forward plans to change the gas boilers on their estate to air source heat pumps, but Cllr Meric Apak won’t consider doing this until the existing gas boilers have reached the end of their life; somewhere around 2040.

Rather than continuing to exacerbate the climate crisis, Camden Council must plan now for the transition to low-carbon heat; we call on the council to provide more information about its plans for all estates.

Christmas trees.

Unfortunately the Christmas tree industry is not “green” (The carbon footprint of a Xmas tree, January 4).

To be beneficial forestry should be long term and biodiverse. But as it’s likely to be some time before they disappear, we are meanwhile campaigning for Camden to change its regime of pollarding other trees, which currently results in a huge amount of biomass being unnecessarily chipped and incinerated for energy, putting carbon back into the atmosphere when it could be kept on the trees for much longer.

If you are interested in finding out more about the campaigning work that Climate Emergency Camden does, please email us at climateemergencycamden@gmail.com

CLIMATE EMERGENCY CAMDEN