LIKE LIVING FILING CABINET

By Mrs Daphne Cook's reaction to the four new tower blocks off Wood. pecker Rd, New Cross, South East London, is the same as that of the majority of tenants in the area: I wouldn't move into one of them. If you have children it's like a prison for them.

'It's not fair on the children and I don't approve of these flats anyway, Mrs Cook went on. 'I don't like them being built here and we're trying to get out. But then you can't pick and choose where you want to live nowadays.' The 24-storey flats off Woodpecker Rd are part of £5m development scheme for the area by the local Lewisham council.

But the council has now tactically admitted that people are not in the least enthusiastic about moving into the new blocks. They said as much when they waived the one-year waiting-list rule to try to encourage young married couples and single people to take the one-bedroomed flats. Above: Mrs Cook. Right: the New Cross tower blocks which no one wants to live in other local residents, all of whom shared Mrs Cook's feelings about the flats.

Mrs Maureen Cowley, who lives in a new maisonette across the road from two of the 'towers' said she 'wouldn't give them a penny for them'.

Her friend Mrs Lorraine Dwyer pays £6.50 a week for her two-bedroomed maisonette. The rent has already gone up once since she moved in five weeks ago!

She pointed out that with the long waiting list for houses in the area it was nonsense for the council to decide to build blocks which were useless for families.

Both she and some of her friends had had to wait for as long as five years before they were entitled to a counhouse, she said. Yet now single people and childless couples could move in without any delay at all.

Mrs Margaret George will be 65 in June. At present she pays £12.80 a fortnight for her two-bedroomed maisonette. When she moved in six years ago the rent was £3.40 a week.

She wasn't happy about the rent, but she wasn't prepared to move into one of the tower blocks.

'You're boxed in', she said. 'That's why people don't like them. They might be all right inside, but what if the lifts broke down. Who's going to carry little children all the way up to the top of that?

I sent my granddaughter after one of them, but she said "No thanks". They told her she would have to pay £7 a week to live right at the top of one of those things. She has one kid and would only have been prepared to live on the ground floor.

'There's only corridors up there. And there's no facilities for the kiddies or for anyone. We need a club for the children and a hall for bingo. They've already taken all our shops away.

'The kids have nowhere to play and that is why the windows get smashed. They say that there's a new building round the corner there that's going to be a church. We've got one church here already. That's enough churches.' A, curate who lives on the centre of the estate surrounded by the 'towers' calls them 'vertical prisons'. The Rev David Everett (27) says:

'I feel strongly about tower blocks. I was working for the social service just about quarter of a mile from Ronan Point when it blew up and I helped deal with all the families who were affected.' He went on: 'However, 1 don't think that it's because of Ronan Point that people don't like living in these blocks. It's the feeling of being trapped. It's the new way of living that people have to evolve' Why did he call them 'vertical prisons'?

'You only have to look at them. The most obvious thing is that they have no balconies.

WINE SHOP

COIN R Mi Nowhere you can get air or dry washing or anything like that.

Over the next 12 months upwards of 2,500 people are to blocks ind the four tower smaller towers on the estate. Social amenities at the moment are confined to one community centre.

Plans for others are in the pipeline. This, however, is no help to the children of the area who are now being accused by some peuple of 'vandalism' As Mrs George said: 'If the kiddies had somewhere to play, then they wouldn't have to hang around smashing windows.'

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