Our landlord is willingly putting our health in danger with lead pipes and other hazards to gain leverage for passing a flawed planning application - please sign this petition to tell Lambeth Council to stop negotiating with our landlord, refuse his planning application, and force him to do essential repairs.

On January 18th Lambeth Council announced to us that illegal high levels of lead had been found in our drinking water. This disastrous news caused alarm and distress, and added yet another serious health hazard to a list including carbon monoxide leaks, winters without heating and hot water, and dangerous structure notices on our balconies.

Lambeth Council is well aware that our rogue millionaire landlord Heinrich Feldman, along with the managing agents Property Partners, are responsible for the managed decline of our estate over a more than 50 year period. The council is also well aware of the landlords and his agents’ behaviour toward the community goes beyond neglect and includes harassment and revenge evictions. ​

Over a year ago, the community celebrated Lambeth Council’s announcement that it would begin enforcement action against our landlord and managing agency.  Last autumn, after lots of hard work and cooperation between Lambeth Private Sector Enforcement and our community, we finally saw notices delivered that demanded works begin by the end of November. Today, those works have still not been started. 

This is because, while Lambeth Enforcement is seeking to hold our landlord accountable for dangerous disrepair, the landlord has been working with Lambeth Planning for several years to get planning permission to build penthouses on top of Dorchester Court and evict the community. The unanimous view of the Dorchester Court renters and leaseholders is that we are being held ransom by our landlord, and that he is being exonerated for allowing easily addressable hazards to persist at Dorchester Court whilst they give him leverage when negotiating with Lambeth in the planning process.

The reality of this view can directly be seen in the community’s attempt to get the lead pipes at Dorchester Court removed to guarantee the safety of their drinking water. On January 26th an article about the lead hazards at Dorchester Court was published in The Mirror:

In a statement, Property Partners told us they planned to replace lead pipes as part of a wider planning application currently with Lambeth Council, which includes building new penthouse flats on the estate.

A spokesperson said: "The replacement of lead pipes across the estate forms part of a wider planning application which is shortly to be determined by Lambeth.

The only way to replace the lead pipes is to have residents vacate their flats as floors and walls will need to be exposed to undertake the works..."

To be absolutely clear -  on October 18th last year lead pipes in the risers were replaced with plastic pipes, from the roof down to the taps in flat 70, in a single day, without anyone having to leave their home. This was done by a plumber employed by our landlord's managing agents. Therefore the landlord’s and managing agent’s statement is a lie.

When the landlord says that hazards cannot be addressed without the approval of his planning application, what he actually means is that he will do nothing unless he gets planning approval. We do not have safe drinking water because the lead pipes in our homes are leverage for our landlord’s planning negotiations. 

Making matters worse, the community is convinced that even granting planning permission will not guarantee that hazards will be addressed. Planners have limited ability to hold landlords accountable, and can at best hope to negotiate around the landlord’s self interest. The evidence suggests that the landlord has no interest in the safety and well-being of the community of Dorchester Court, and will only address hazards if enforced upon by Private Sector Enforcement, rather than the weaker tools of the planning department. 

In negotiations with Lambeth, we have repeatedly been told that planning and enforcement are disconnected processes at Lambeth Council. However, at Dorchester Court the facts are clear: residents are intentionally being subjected to severe hazards by the landlord for the sake of keeping a fundamentally flawed planning application alive.

Planning and enforcement are not separate processes for our landlord, and he is negotiating the process by putting our health at risk.

This fact must inform both the planning and enforcement processes at Lambeth; to both protect the integrity of these processes and to protect us, the residents, from continual harm. 

The planning application must be heard quickly, must be refused, and enforcement must be allowed to continue unencumbered by planning. 

PLEASE SIGN YOUR SUPPORT OF THIS LETTER