• I WISH to add my voice in support and outrage at the treatment my former neighbour Bartley Robbins has received from Camden Council, (‘Give me a flat’ plea by last man in street HS2 emptied, June 14).

Surely they must have noticed he was “trespassing” if, indeed he was, at some point in the last 35-odd years when they happily took his rent and council tax.

Now they are denying him his right to be rehoused by HS2, HS2 having, I presume, given Camden the funds and responsibility, and therefore the power over the rehousing.

I don’t believe it can be lawful for the council to block the obligations of the railway to rehouse displaced people, as set out in the bill passed to allow the compulsory purchase order.

It is hard to tell whether Camden are being deliberately obfuscatory or merely bureaucratically confused. They readily admit that they have lost all the relevant paperwork from 35-odd years ago which could resolve the issue.

Some time after he was given an eviction notice and months after I moved out of Cobourg Street, we both received letters to “share with us the progress that’s being made” on the building of our new flats! Clearly the council doesn’t know what it’s doing.

The block I have moved to is less than one-quarter occupied while my friend is living in the vermin-infested (no exaggeration), boarded-up, squalor of what was once our lovely street. It seems the council would rather make more homeless people than collect rent from reliable tenants.

It is hard to know one’s rights as an individual, let alone fight for them when faced with such a massively complex bureaucratic machine. Please, can anyone help?

LOZ BUZZARD
NW1