Tenants on the Finsbury Estate

• I FEEL compelled to respond to the comments of the executive member for homes and communities, Cllr Una O’Halloran, when she implied that the privatisation of the bin shed on Finsbury Estate will benefit the tenants, (Save our bin sheds! Commercial laundry could operate on estate, June 24).

The tenants on the estate have not received any benefit from this private leasing of our facilities, despite the £25k a year the council it is getting for prioritising the needs of businesses over tenants. In fact tenants are already paying rent for these facilities.

Rather than working with the tenants, as she now claims, the council have kept their plans secret from us, refusing to consult. In fact her predecessor denied any knowledge of it at all.

A complaint to Islington Council’s chief executive’s office was sat on for eight months and a Freedom of Information request has resulted in the council releasing no documents at all. A lack of a paper trail certainly arouses our suspicions.

In fact it is only in the last few weeks, due to mounting pressure from tenants, that the council are beginning to answer questions despite the lease being agreed in 2020.

The claim that they are creating “pride and strong communities on estates” are empty words, which add insult to injury as far as we are concerned.

We can’t think of any other estate where there are no bin stores and tenants are forced to live with rats, fly-tipping, and overflowing rubbish.

This only shows a disrespect for tenants by the council, that seems to us, to be fixated on the needs of businesses and developers, not their voters.

SUE SULLIVAN
Finsbury Estate Tenant, EC1