About London Borough of Islington

King Square Estate has several blocks both Low & High rise built around a small Park and Church. The Park is an extension of the Church yard that was surrounded by rows of terraced houses. The Church incorporates two others that were on City road and were demolished or badly damaged in the War. The Park was quadrupled in size from the old Churchyard, when this estate was built in the early sixties. The Tower Blocks here, Turnpike & Rahere houses are built on the ‘Finnish arch’ system. These were originally very well built of reinforced concrete with Pilkington Steel windows. the Windows have been replaced recently with more modern plastic double glazed units. These have unfortunately considerably reduced the glazed area of the windows, as the frames are now 6 inches of white plastic instead of 1.5 Inches of steel; so much less natural light now illuminates the interior.
The management of the block suffers as LBI uses its least able managers in benefits, the next least able are managing accommodation. So it is mostly because budgets need to be spent to justify their continuance that anything is done. So some very odd projects are financed, then refinanced to correct them. Then completely removed as a better (different) idea is at that time in vogue???
But the Blocks built in the sixties were very well built, have good sized rooms and fair facilities that management have difficulties totally wrecking. The new blocks, completed in the last few years are less well separated from each other and are noticeably smaller, with considerably higher rents (for the LBI rented flats), most are privately owned/rented. As are a lot within the original Estate

The building looks beautiful but seems to be cheaply built. We can’t hang anything on the walls like shelves or the TV because there are no studs in the walls and it just falls down. Some of the windows fall out if you open them too far. The interior door handles all broke and fell off within a week of moving in and the council refused to fix them citing ‘wear and tear’. The buzzer breaks at least once a month and takes weeks to be fixed. There’s only one plug in the laundry cupboard so we can’t have the tumble dryer in there. No air conditioning so with the big windows the place is deathly hot in the summer. The door frame around the front door of my flat started coming away from the plaster after the first week or two of living here and again the council wouldn’t fix it. There’s condensation trapped in my living room window so we’ve never been able to see out of it, still waiting for a repair three years later. Although some of these repair issues are down to the council, if the place had been built well enough in the first place we wouldn’t have the issues at all. The balcony is not covered so it’s useless in the rain and a death trap in the sun. The paving stones get so hot that you cant stand out there. The balconies are also right next to the neighbours windows so every time someone has a smoke everyone elses flat is full of it. In all, beautifully presented but an absolute pain to live here. I’m spending a fortune constantly fixing things on a property that I don’t own.

The design of the estate still looks like 60’s mass housing design despite all the money spent by the council to improve the overall look of the estate and its grounds. I can’t help thinking that the money would have been better spent on building more low cost housing, even though new flats were built over the parking area for the flats, there were nowhere near enough to meet the current demand. I am disabled and have been trying to swap my accommodation to a ground floor flat for over 15 years but it is near on impossible to swap a 1 bedroom flat, no matter how good the area is.
Living on the estate for over 30 years now, I have to say, I love the area and it’s central location makes it easy to travel into the west end in 20 minutes. The local shops are very handy and Upper street is only 5 minutes away and full of restaurants cinema, street market (Angel Islington) and shops. The parking is getting more and more difficult with more and more families owning more than one car and resident parking bays are simply not enough. The outdated entry phone system could do with replacing as even when it works, you can barely hear or understand who’s at the door. On the whole, King’s square is a pleasant estate and is always kept very clean and tidy.

The landlord and property manager is Islington council and generally are very responsive to any problems. We have onsite concierges who are great and the caretaker couldn’t be more helpful. Parking may be avalible on site, but we definitely have got Kings Square gardens with its play grounds is always well looked after. The design can be described as Brutal, but the flats are large, were refurbished with new kitchens, bathrooms and double glazing a few years ago.