Betty Sammy Johnson rugged up with her cat Venus

RESIDENTS of a Gospel Oak estate who have had decades of problems with their heating are once again struggling to keep warm during the cold snap.

Dunboyne Road, a Grade II-listed estate which uses communal heating, has been plagued with intermittent heating and hot water outages that have pushed some people living there to tears.  The tenants and residents association (TRA) has demanded “urgent action” from the council to “resolve this long-standing legacy issue”.

Betty Sammy Jackson, 70, who has lived at Dunboyne for 22 years told the New Journal: “I’ve had 20 years of little or no heating here. I’m absolutely sick of this Groundhog Day event. I’ve had substandard heating since I’ve moved here.”

She woke up on Monday morning to a carpet of snow outside and 13 degree temperatures inside.

Age UK recommends that living rooms be heated to a minimum of 18 degrees to prevent the risk of heart attacks.

When the system is not down entirely, Ms Jackson’s heating works only “when other people are not using it”, such as in the middle of the night. Her hot water rarely goes above 20 degrees, making it difficult to run a bath.

She was given an electric heater and immersion boiler by the council, but is worried about how much it will cost to run. She recalled bathing from a bowl of hot water from the kettle last winter. This is despite contractors updating the pipes in her block earlier this year.

“You go through those periods of thinking, Christ, is it worth bloody living? I want to write Christmas cards. I can’t even begin to think about it. I have to talk myself into putting my nightie on,” she said. “It has to be criminal, leaving people in temperatures which are likely to harm their physicality.”

Residents get compensation from the council if the communal heating is down for more than three days. The compensation is £3.50 a day.

She has three claims to make for outages that have happened in the past two months. NHS doctor Ayshea Hameeduddin, 44, lives in a split-level flat that she owns.

She has had no heating downstairs since she moved there in 2003. Last winter, she had no heating on either floor. She said: “I’ve called every day this week because I’ve had no heating in my flat and it comes on intermittently. “Like Betty, I will get some heating when there’s less demand on the systems. So in the early hours of the morning, maybe four or five in the morning, maybe my heating will come on full blast.

“But in the evening I don’t have any. There’s vulnerable people on the estate, regardless of whether you’re a tenant or leaseholder, you’re paying for heating and you’re not getting it reliably. It’s not sustainable every winter to go through this.”

The Dunboyne estate

Leaseholders are charged every time an engineer is called out for a heating complaint.

Ms Hameeduddin has launched a formal complaint for the £1,000 of annual service charges – as the heating problems continues.

The TRA said: “In the midst of a cost of living crisis, soaring energy bills and freezing temperatures heading into the Christmas period, many of our vulnerable residents are without heating or hot water. Camden’s response is to supply temporary electric heaters which many residents can’t afford to turn on due to the impact this would have on their electricity bills.”

A Camden Council spokesperson said: “We would like to apologise to residents at the Dunboyne estate who have been experiencing issues with their heating and hot water. The issues were due to a boiler failure which was fixed on Tuesday, and we’re monitoring the estate daily to ensure the heating and hot water system continues to work as it should. “The Dunboyne estate has been identified as part of the Council’s plans to replace and upgrade its heating systems, with works due to begin in autumn 2023.”