PEOPLE in Colindale are feeling the chill after the failure of a boiler has left some without heating for more than 12 days.

Around 900 homes at Grahame Park lost their heating on November 26 following the breakdown of a heating system operated by Barnet Homes.

Other buildings affected included Barnet College, Grahame Park Library, Wingfield Children’s Centre, Flightways Resource Centre and St James’ Catholic High School in Great Strand.

Barnet College says it has spent more than £10,000 on alternative heating and is still without heating in some of its buildings.

Marilyn Hawkins, principal of Barnet College said: “The situation is completely intolerable.

“The system is still inoperative and Barnet Homes has not been able to give indication of when the problem is likely to be rectified.”

“While we sympathise with the difficulties faced by Barnet Homes in maintaining a 50-year-old system, the firm has a contractual obligation to provide the college with suitable heating.

“Barnet Homes must make the system fully operative or provide us with a safe and effective alternative before the start of January."

St James’ school was forced to close its doors for three days before headteacher Niamh Arnull was able to organise temporary heating.

Ms Arnull said: “It did cause us problems because we have students with exams coming up and we had to cancel a number of events – we had to cancel our senior citizens Christmas party.

Barnet Homes said it was working to restore full heating to Barnet College as quickly as possible and said it planned to install temporary boilers at the site early next week.

Chief executive Tracey Lees, said: “Our staff have been working around the clock to try to fix these unforeseeable issues with the district heating system as quickly as possible.

“We are hopeful there will be no further reoccurrence of the heating problems while we make long-term repairs but we have offered two temporary heaters to all residents to ensure they can keep warm throughout the winter."