• AS one who lives close to the Holloway Prison site and involved in CP4H, Community Plan for Holloway, I object to Hanna’s (of N19) complaint about social and council housebuilding, (Let’s have a count of people needing housing, June 5).

Not only is “genuinely affordable” social housing, and above all council housing, desperately needed in the borough, but what is being built is zero-carbon, so of a much higher energy standard than any Victorian terraces.

Certainly we need a lot more green and open spaces, but that comes with flats rather than houses, with their often extensive private gardens. And something also needs to be done about empty houses and flats.

In the 1970s Camden and Islington successfully used Compulsory Purchase Orders to municipalise these. So why doesn’t the council begin to CPO properties and extend its direct labour department to put these into good order as part of an extensive retrofit programme?

This would also require the development of a comprehensive training programme in collaboration with local further education colleges so young people in the borough become the highly skilled construction workers needed to carry this out.

So, let’s make this the new normal – to join the Build Back Better campaign with energy-efficient, affordable, council housing and a comprehensive retrofit programme throughout the borough, carried out by the council’s own directly employed and trained workforce.

LINDA CLARKE,
N7