Residents have on Rowley Way have a message for the council

AN overhaul of a heating system in a historic estate has triggered more than 250 objections in three weeks.

After 14 years of talks with residents on the Alexandra and Ainsworth estate, Rowley Way, Camden Council has finally submitted planning applications.

However, residents fear that the new system the council want to use will not work.

Sara Bell, secretary of the A&A tenants’ and residents’ association, said: “We talked to some people at the Whittington estate that have had exactly the same heating system put in six years ago. And still to date, it is unresolved and they have more problems now than they had before it was put in.”

The listed estate is heated communally through the walls, fired by a gas boiler – but architects say the pipework is “in need of urgent replacement due to extreme corrosion and risk of catastrophic failure”.

This has resulted in “costly and unpredictable failures” that result in loss of heating and hot water for residents.

The plans propose to remove the heating coils in the walls, install radiators and double glazing and still use the same gas boilers.

Residents feared the new radiator system would not properly warm the flats, which have concrete walls, and would cause mould to grow. They  have also said the plans would ruin the interior and exterior of flats in the listed estate, and do not offer a greener alternative.

Ms Bell said: “We are a Grade II*-listed set of buildings. We like where we live, and we love our flats. What they plan to do is to make the way we live impossible, because it’s going to change the space we have within our homes.

“Because we’ve got no radiators, everything is against the wall. The whole design of this place is for a purpose. The way we’re heated is for a purpose and that is to give people the maximum amount of space we can have to actually live in.

She said residents are “committed to finding a solution to our energy needs in the long-term”, adding: “There are so many objections. It’s just fantastic. And the residents here have just rallied and we’ve been knocking on everybody’s door.”

The Grade II*-listed A&A estate was designed in a Brutalist style in 1968 by the visionary architect and former Camden Council em­ployee, Neave Brown.

In an objection, Eliza Bonham Carter said: “The plans do not respond to the climate emergency, instead they lock the estate into an out of date system that pumps hot water long distances. Other than the introduction of double glazing, there is no ambition to look at insulating the fabric of the building – this should be the first step.”

There are three separate applications currently available to view on the council’s planning website.

Councillor Meric Apak, Cabinet Member for Better Homes, said: “The project is complex given the listed nature of the estate – but our proposed scheme allows us to preserve the integrity of the original design.

“We have been working closely with residents to develop plans – we invited residents to view and state their preference of the type of new system and we have gathered feedback from estate-wide surveys.

“We’ll continue to work closely with residents as this project moves forward.”