THE Council’s cabinet are expected to rubber stamp a government funded £11 million scheme to overhaul the heating system on the borough’s largest estate.

Cabinet members will meet at Ilford Town Hall next Tuesday to discuss the plans for the Orchard Estate in Woodford Green.

People in the Liston Way tower block on the estate are furious after a change in the way heating bills are calculated left them facing bills 30 percent higher than any of their neighbouring blocks.

The scheme under discussion would see blocks fitted with new windows and cladding and flats provided with individual thermostats.

Jim Brennan, 65, who lives in Liston Way organised a petition against the rise in prices and is sceptical about the proposed scheme.

He said: “They have come up with this plan at the last minute to get us off their backs, but we will not do that.

“The real issue is that people will go skint before anything changes.”

Everyone in Liston Way has been asked to take meter readings in their flat in an effort to find out why the heating charges for the block are so much higher than anywhere else on the estate.

Cabinet member for Housing, Robin Turbefield said: “The discrepancy might well be down to a faulty system in one of the flats and this should help identify that.”

He added that he expected his fellow cabinet members to agree to go ahead with the new scheme, but denied the council had decided to apply for funding as a direct result of the problems in Liston Way.

A condition of securing the money needed to complete the new scheme is that any works be completed by December 2012.

In her report to councillors, Chief Housing officer Lisa Marston admits that there are dangers associated with it.

She said: “In the Council’s haste to secure the funding the council is left vulnerable to hidden cost and unforeseen risk.”

And she adds: “The work will create a significant amount of disruption to the estate.”

Stewart Bisset, 65, who lives in Liston Way, said: “I believe them when they say they haven’t just come up with this scheme at the last minute.

“I just hope it happens because I would be a lot happier to have control over and pay for my own heating.”