• LIVING on the notorious Barnsbury estate, you expect problems from time to time. But the biggest problem is the housing association that runs it.

Newlon Housing and its estate team Belmo are not very accommodating when it comes to the problems tenants and residents face.

Belmo, based at Barnsbury Community Centre, is the first port of call when residents have to report repairs and buy parking permits. Staff cannot be bothered to leave their seats; they expect the person to shout their inquiry across the room, to where they are sitting at their desks.

You don’t get any feedback about things you report, so residents have to go back to the community centre several days later to find out what is happening. When the Belmo office is closed after 5pm, residents have to call a mobile number for emergency repairs, but it can take several attempts to get somebody to answer.

There is also a Belmo board, which is run by residents living on the estate. They meet at various times to discuss issues and matters regarding the estate. They hold an annual meeting where tenants go to raise problems with Belmo and Newlon Housing members, but nobody has any trust or faith in any of them.

Newlon Housing is based at Tottenham Hale, where they make decisions from the comfort of their office chairs. They never come to the estate to meet residents face to face to see for themselves what effects the problems have on the people who live here.

People have been waiting months and even years to get issues raised, resolved and fixed. There is a lack of security and enforcement on the estate, which makes it a stressful place. If Barnsbury estate was owned and run by Islington Council, the majority of these problems would not exist.

ISAAC AMOAKO
Barnsbury estate, N1