• OUR tenants’ and residents’ association does a good job in trying to hold Islington Council to account for the poor management and maintenance of the Finsbury Estate.

Many of us that live here thank them.

As well as challenging the council for the removal of the bin shed from our use, and the rat infestation, they have managed to get the council to:

— renew the children’s play area (after four years of lobbying);

— agree to empty our waste bins and lumber store daily (although so far this is not occurring); and

— get our stairwells painted after council failures to carry out cyclical repairs.

But the list of council failures on our estate is endless, given the rents and service charges that we pay.

We should have had the government-required 1 per cent annual rent decrease from 2016 to 2020 but on average our rents were higher in 2019/2020 than they were in 2015/2016. Islington Council rents are the fourth highest of all boroughs in London.

Some outstanding issues we have with the Labour council are their failures to:

• thoroughly clean entrance stairs, particularly of one small block where lino was installed, without consulting residents, and which looks disgusting;

• provide sufficient emptying of garchey pits (that remain from our old sink-unit waste disposal system) which results in waste backing up into residents’ flats;

• maintain green spaces that they are responsible for, while recently hacking plants in the areas that it has long been agreed residents will maintain;

• pick waste from communal grass / planted area on the estate – leading some residents
to deal with this themselves;

• avoid leaving communal lights on across the estate day and night, while saying they are an environmentally sound council (what are the bets that we get increased service charges for this with increases in energy prices?); and

• resolve fire safety issues on our two large blocks that are above seven floors high.

Are of other Islington Council estates residents suffering similarly?

XAVIER BENDLE
Skinner Street, EC1