Braithwaite House

• UNTIL the Grenfell Tower disaster, warnings from residents fell on deaf ears – nobody was listening. Islington Council ignored a 2014 petition on fire safety deficiencies from residents of Braithwaite House in Finsbury.

I had raised the question of some gas pipe installations undertaken by Southern Housing Group (SHG) several years ago but it wasn’t until the disaster that SHG arranged a fire-safety inspection – the first time I have personally been approached since 1995. (And the inspector agreed with me that some gas piping entering flats through a glass panel above the front door was a fire hazard.) Some of the work has already been done.

Last week, the council housing committee considered fire safety progress and concentrat­ed on defending its achievements, in just the same way that the whole council was slammed in the local press the same week for amending (and watering down) a resolution on transport and public health proposed by Councillor Caroline Russell, with the suggestion of unnecessary defensive­ness on the part of the Labour administration.

The resolution was basically supportive of the council but the Labour group seems unable to work with the opposition, even when in general agreement with it. It is time to stop shouting and start listening.

This inability to listen goes right through society. The government is so obsessed with Brexit that it will not consider any­thing else, including the question of tower block sprinklers. Islington and Shoreditch Housing Association shows every sign of not hearing its tenants in the rush to determine the cost and profit of every­thing while knowing the value of nothing.

We should remember that argument is about who is right, while a reasoned debate is about what is right.

MIKE CROWSON
Islington Green Party