SEEING RED AND FEELING BLUE

House painting 
outrage: "Is Riverside
hitting back?”

First, it was  red and white stripes painted on a London  upmarket home. Now, homes on a former council estate in Longtown(Cumbria) have had a similar paint job in blue and cream.

And like the outraged neighbours of the striped  home in Kensington, the estate tenants are furious.

In Kensington, the neighbours claimed  in the Daily Mail last week that the stripes - they cover all the front of the house - were ordered by the woman who owns the property.

She ordered  the painting, they say, because they  objected to her plans to demolish the £15 million  and rebuild it with a much bigger house that would include a two-storey basement.

In Longtown  the “stripes”  were ordered by the estate landlord, the giant Riverside Housing Association of Liverpool. Tenants are wondering why  Riverside chose the garish colour scheme. It is still being completed.

Longtown tenants`relations with Riverside are at an all-time low and have been for three years, ever since Riverside installed dodgy boilers in about sixty homes in the town. Tenants cannot afford to use the boilers because of sky-high energy bills.

Complaints about the blue and cream paint jobs were made at this week`s meeting of Carlisle Tenants` and Residents` Federation. Longtown members of the Federation said the town was outraged  by the way the houses had been disfigured and there had been talk of a petition.

One member told the Federation:”The blue is particularly objectionable- it is a psychedelic blue and can be seen for miles around. Tenants were not properly consulted- they understood that any painting would be in keeping with the other property in the area”

Other tenants were more forceful. One, speaking outside her home said: “Since the trouble started about the dodgy boilers, we have  kept up the pressure on Riverside to give us proper boilers that we can afford to use. Is the paint job Riverside`s way of hitting back.

“The houses look appalling”