Holloway Prison site

• NO doubt your readers will be aware that Islington Council has more than 18,000 individuals and families on its housing waiting list.

There are 750 families in temporary council accommodation, hundreds of street homeless and thousands more living in insecure, overcrowded and over-priced privately rented accommodation in the borough, often in unfit conditions.

They may also know the former Territorial Army and the 10-acre Holloway Prison sites in Parkhurst Road are lying empty and unused.

Five years ago, the Ministry of Defence sold the TA site for £16m to Parkhurst Developments, which was refused planning permission as its intended housing did not meet the council’s requirement of 50 per cent council housing and other forms of affordable tenure.

After the courts supported the council, the developer has chosen to leave the site dormant.

Having closed Holloway Women’s Prison two years ago, the Ministry of Justice invited bids for the site with a deadline of November 2017. There have been unconfirmed reports that it had been sold, but no official statement made and the site remains empty.

Last winter, the Ministry of Justice refused permission for the former visitors’ centre to be used as a shelter for the street homeless on a temporary basis.

Islington Homes for All believes it is scandalous that, given the desperate need for council homes to rent, these two sites built on public land should be sold to developers whose real interest lies in building luxury flats – all because of the Tory government’s insistence on selling off public assets rather than meeting people’s basic needs.

We would like to see both sites brought back into public hands to enable 100 per cent urgently-needed public housing.

One way to achieve this would be their re-acquisition by London Mayor Sadiq Khan using part of the £4.82bn housing budget granted to him in May of this year by the government.

To join or find out more about Islington Homes for All, please contact the Islington Tribune.

JENNY KASSMAN
Islington Homes for All