• I AM a long-time leaseholder and have lived in Camden / St Pancras all my life.

It is fully accepted that property maintenance is very necessary and the history of the appalling neglect of the financial interests of many residents should be a matter of great concern.

Contract proposals recently received include permissions for “necessary” works. These, in line with all previous contracts, have not been subjected to any independent checking or agreement.

Council employees (management) have a long record of ignoring repeated complaints of residents. I could give several examples of these historic neglects relating to contracted building / maintenance contracts.

Rejection of these does not make them untrue, there is far too much evidence from too many to find rejection acceptable.

In any case, the bias favouring below-standard works paid for by residents (and Camden taxpayers) is totally unacceptable.

In recent times, the Whittington Estate had imposed central heating and hot water “improvements / replacements”.

Following these new installations residents complained of lack of hot water at various hours of the day, noisy pipework etc and found little or no interest or co-operation from Camden officials or indeed the contractor.

The rectification of this has taken a time approaching four years. And there are other examples.

There also seems very little interest in widely discussing contracts. Camden boasts of interest and dedication to social concerns. In practice I clearly see ignored matters in these contracts.

We, like many areas, have an aging population. That means, in these times of economic decline, residents are being now asked to agree to and accept contracts for unknown charges and for undetermined works.

There is a clear lack of consideration of pensioner income, and the low-paid, and the out-of-work who are, or could be, leaseholders. The result could be they lose their home.

Why can’t residents be given an estimate (in the same manner as the council tax) to at least prepare them rather than receiving a sudden horror amount way beyond reach?

I write this as an 86-year-old living on a pension, but seemingly of no current interest to “socially aware” Camden officialdom.

NORMAN SPEIGHT
Address supplied