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OFFICIALDOM calls it planning blight. The people who have to live in the 45-year-old blocks of flats alongside the Barnet By-pass at Hatfield have another name for it: Neglect. The 128 flats opposite the British Aerospace factory are doomed. They are all to be demolished when the new cut-and-cover A1 M road goes through from Stanborough to Roestock. The plan to knock down the flats was first mooted in 1973and there had been r u m o u r a n d s p e c u l a t i o n before then. As a result no one has bothered to do any m a j or r e pa i r s on t he p r o perties for almost ten years. During those ten years the Courts have fallen almost into ruin. Many flats have ha d t o be e v a c ua t e d a n d most of the others are used only by the indiscriminating s tu de n ts o f H a t fi e l d P o l y technic. Tenants have literally prep a r e d o v e r t h e c r a c k s t o m a k e t h e b e s t o f t h e i r doomed homes. Alas, the landlords have done a great deal less. The Department of the Environment, Welwyn Hatfield Council, and the remaining private landlords seem determined to do as little as possible. The latest news is that the Courts will be demolished early in the 1980s. It seems unlikely that any significant a m o u n t o f m o n e y w i l l b e spent on them before then.

BLIGHTED HOMES WHERE NOBODY CARES

THE younger residents of the Courts at Hatfieldthe last remaining slums in the town are able to joke about their predicament.
They dub their homes the pits of despair, the piles of bile, and other things too obscene to mention. There are 128 flats in the Courts. The four monumental buildings of Altham Court, Haddon Court, Cumberland Court and Rodney Court are a d i s g r a c e a n d t h e y a r e flanked by Greenways Court t o t h e n o r t h a n d H e r o n s Court to the south, which are habitable only by comparison. When the courts were built in the 1930s they were prest i g e b l o c k s . T h i n g s h a v e changed since then. Our interviews with tenants tell their own story, but it is worth saying that more than half the time of one member of Welwyn Hatfield Council's Health Department staff is taken up entirely with complaints from residents of the Courts. At one time the council let m o r e t h a n 5 0 f l a t s i n t h e Courts to tenants. Now they let eight. The council's housing manager Mr jack Richards o n s a i d : " We ' r e g e t t i n g people out of there as fast as we can." Most of the flats have now b e e n b o u g h t u p b y t h e Government's Department of th e En v ir o n ment w ho w ill, eventually, knock the whole lot down for the new motorway.

More than half the remaini n g h a b i t a b l e f l a t s i n t h e courts are tenanted by goodhumoured students from Hatfield Polytechnic. Unfortunately many of their fe llo w residents blame the students, rather than planning blights for the decay of the flats. Our investigation showed t h a t t h e m a j o r i t y o f t h e students are working as hard a s a n y o t h e r t e n a n t , a n d against all the odds, to keep a semblance of respectability around the Courts. I sp en t a day w ith photo grapher Denis Williams visiting homes at the Courts. Here are the stories of some of the people we met. Mrs Daphne Turner, a 73-year-old widow has lived in h e r g r o u n d - f l o o r f l a t i n Altham Court for 43 years. Her flat which like the other i n h a b i t e d o n e s i n A l t h a m Court is privately owned. She told me: "I've watched the C ourts fall almost into p i e c e s d u r i n g t h e p a s t t e n y ea r s . I t u s e d t o b e a n ic e p l a c e t o l i v e , b u t n o t a n y more. " Th e o n ly w ay I' ve been able to get any repairs done lately is to complain to the h e a l t h d e p a r t m e n t . I t s obvious that the landlords, Select Management Ltd, want to do as little as possible." Mrs Turner, who pays 5.60 a week rent, is trying to get a two-bedroomed council flat. She said: "I need two bedrooms so that my daughter can visit me, but the council say they can let me have only a flat with one bedroom. Meanwhile I'm having to put up with increasing vandalism and with dampness." O n t h e t h i r d f l o o r a Altham Court market stall holder Graham Patterson, 26, said: "We've had five separate electrical contractors condemn the wiring in the flat. The boiler house to the block, which used to provide central heating was flooded ages ago and has been boarded up. I was lucky, when I moved in this flat was in quite good condition - but I did have to scrape mould from the walls." In Cumberland Court three flats were ruined when a water storage tank in the roof broke up. Thousands of gallons of water flooded down through three floors. Hatfield Polytechnic student Robert Griffiths, 22, who lives in a second floor flat in Cumberland Court said: "It was like a waterfall. We couldn't use any electricity for five days because of the water. Conditions got so bad that my girl friend moved out." Like the other 60 students of the Polytechnic living in the flats Mr Griffiths is a tenant of the Department of the Environment. Fellow student Himid Reza, from Iran, who has lived in H a dd on C ou rt fo r fo ur months told me: "I was in Cumberland Court for two years before moving here, but they moved me out when the water tank broke. Things aren't much better here. Most of the windows on the flat above are broken and this means that my ceiling gets damp. They keep saying they are going to knock the place down, but nothing seems to happen." Third year philosophy student Les Knox was in the process of moving out when we visited him. He is moving from Haddon Court to Cumberland Court. He said: "The roof is collapsing, and the council's health department has said that my flat is too dangerous to live in. The Department of the Environment has done some repairs for me, but only when things go badly wrong." Another tenant of Haddon Court, a young woman who is expecting a baby in April told me : "I thank God that I am 6 moving out to a council house in three weeks. We've re-decorated the house, but the dampness makes it a waste of time." Heron Court is occupied only by Polytechnic students. This block is only 15 years old but suffers from the same problems of dampness and leaking roofs as the older blocks. Aky Najeeb, 20, had friends in when we called. He said: "This place is a dumpbut it's better

than the flats in the other courts. I decorated the whole place when I moved in it was in a terrible state." John Davitt said that his flat two doors away had a warped ceiling caused by rain coming in from a leaking roof. He said: "The Department of the Environment did mend the leak, but they left my crazy ceiling as it was." And the landlords? Select M a n a g e m e n t , w h i c h h a s a London telephone number, do not appear to ever answer their phone. I tried to contact them several times on four separate days without success. And a Department of the Environment s pokes man at Bedford assured me that Cumber land Court was "all b o a r d e d u p " a n d t h a t " N o body lives there any more." The tenants who live in Cumberland Court, and who are paying rent to the Department of the Environment, tell, me otherwise.

Special report by BOB TRUSCOT

Pictures by

DENIS WILLIAMS

Pictures by DENIS WILLIAMS