West End Extra - Letters to the Editor: No one ever had the right to ‘tear up’ secure tenancies

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West End Extra - LETTERS TO THE EDITOR
Published: 16 November 2007

No one ever had the right to ‘tear up’ secure tenancies

• THE more I read about the disgusting way in which the elderly tenants of Macintosh House have been treated by Westminster City Council, the more obvious it becomes that the spirit of Lady Tesco lives on in her egregious successors.
We now learn that their secure tenancies were “torn up” in order to dislodge them from their homes. Whoever did this had no right or power to do so: secure tenancies are for life and they are transferable.
Westminster City Council’s deputy director of housing Steve Moore manages to be facile and contradictory all within the space of one sentence when he says: “Arguably housing associations can gain access to these units more readily than secure tenancies but in practice assured tenancies are just as protected given that housing associations have to abide by Housing Corporation rules and regulations which protect the rights of tenants.”
If assured and secure tenants are equally protected, why go to such desperate lengths to change their agreements? Obviously they are not equally protected: these underhand tactics were needed to get them out.
Furthermore tenants are protected under the Rent Acts: Housing Corporation rules and regulations are designed to protect tenants from the likes of Mr Moore.
Mr Moore goes on to claim that all this was done with “their complete consent”. Just because someone is bamboozled and bullied into doing something does not mean they have “consented”. Why would anyone agree to downgrade a secure tenancy agreement when they don’t have to?
I applaud Sante Zanello’s lone stand against these vile bullies. He should keep his secure tenancy wherever he ends up and all the others are entitled to have theirs reinstated wherever they are now.
No one ever had any legal right to deprive them of their tenancies in the first place.
Martin Kennedy
Brewer Street, W1

Send your letters to: The Letters Editor, West End Extra, 40 Camden Road, London, NW1 9DR or email to letters@westendextra.co.uk. The deadline for letters is midday Wednesday. The editor regrets that anonymous letters cannot be published, although names and addresses can be withheld. Please include a full name, postal address and telephone number.
Letters may be edited for reasons of space.

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