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Protesters fear loss of their homes
• I SEE that Mike Read has branded Islington Leaseholders Association (ILA) members who demonstrated outside Homes for Islington’s headquarters as bullies (A slap in the face from our ‘listening landlord’, October 19).
As your photograph in last week’s edition made clear, the majority at the demo were pensioners who protested peacefully. I spoke to people who had bills ranging from £14,000 to £28,000.
Mr Read has had his Private Finance Initiative (PFI) bill capped at £10,000 and is apparently happy with it. Fine. Maybe he can afford it. Most can’t. Many leaseholders are intimidated by the threat of legal action from the council and are worried sick at the prospect of losing their homes.
What has Mr Read got to say to these leaseholders? He says the ILA is illegal and he will go to court prove it. Apparently, saving 40p a week on your ILA subscription is going to solve all your problems. At 40p a week it would take more than 1,000 years to pay a £28,000 bill.
Not content with attacking the ILA, Mr Read goes on to attack Brian Potter and seems to applaud HfI executives for riding roughshod over the wishes of the Federation of Islington Tenants Associations (FITA) membership.
As Ed Fredenburgh and DJ Stevens pointed out last week, it seems that Mr Read can’t work with other groups.
So far, Mr Read has problems with ILA, PFI-LAG, Islington Leaseholders Forum and FITA. In other words, all the groups which are trying to do something for residents. So who can he work with? Nobody. Whoops! I forgot, there is his own vibrant organisation which may have as many as two members.
Unlike Mr Read’s shadowy organisation, the ILA was given the go-ahead by 76 per cent of leaseholders who voted, and will soon hold elections covering all 10,000 or so of Islington’s council leaseholders.
This ballot will elect a board of 15 members to represent all leaseholders and turn the ILA into a properly incorporated association that defends our rights. The ILA will give us a strong voice and be able to offer legal advice, surveying and other services.
When the ballot papers come through, I urge all leaseholders to look closely at the candidates and vote for a strong team. Your vote will endorse the independence of the ILA and give it a mandate to work on your behalf.
Richard Rosser
Islington Leaseholders Forum
• Once again, I really must thank Mike Read for presenting me with an ideal opportunity to explain to Tribune readers just why the Federation of Islington Tenants Associations and the proposed Islington Leaseholders Association were recently in dispute with Homes for Islington and Islington Council.
Unfortunately, FITA’s dispute resulted from HfI’s intransigent attitude towards FITA’s refusal to collect sensitive personal data on religion, colour, ethnicity and sexuality from approximately 40,000 tenants within their Federation, since this was considered by tenants to be beyond HfI’s remit as a management agent and, as such, constituted a gross infringement of tenants’ personal liberty.
To allow tenants to decide this extremely sensitive issue for themselves, I arranged and chaired a meeting of tenants from 52 council estates at Islington Town Hall where I was mandated unanimously to renegotiate the terms on which FITA would sign up to HfI’s latest demands.
It was the power of those 52 tenants’ associations which brought HfI back into renegotiation with FITA, and culminated in discussions which resolved the situation to the satisfaction of both parties. Thanks to the unified pressure exerted by irate tenants, FITA subsequently obtained by joint negotiation, not coercion, the best service level agreement 0to date.
Notably, ILA’s decision to protest in public about HfI and the council’s treatment in regard to the terms of their proposed “totally financially independent leaseholders association” was considered necessary since neither HfI nor the council would answer urgent emails on the subject of inconsistencies within the balloting process.
Fortunately, once again “people power” won the day since directly after our demonstration, HfI agreed to arrange a joint meeting between the ILA steering committee, the council, HfI and Consensus. Eamon McGoldrick, chief executive of HfI, assured us all that HfI had taken advice on the legality of the proposed association, and is therefore content to continue with its implementation.
Perhaps if Mr Read were to attend some of the meetings which I hold for residents to elicit their response on problems which affect us all, instead of simply venting his spleen in print, his comments would contain some recognisable elements of unbiased fact, rather then just whimsical flights of fancy!
Brian Potter
Chairman, Federation of Islington Tenants Associations
Chairman, Islington Leaseholders Association steering committee
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