Grace Lally in the unused flats in Wellington Mews

ACTIVISTS took over flats left empty for five years in protest at London’s housing crisis.

Housing Rebellion staged an occupation of the 28 vacant flats in Wellington Mews, next to Pentonville Prison.

They entered the building and put up the banners of the groups involved – Islington Homes for All (IHFA), Housing Rebellion, and Islington Extinction Rebellion.

The three- and four-bed flats have been vacant since 2018, and campaigners say they are urgently needed to ease the housing crisis.

“Working-class families are being squeezed out of London but 28 empty flats are sitting there,” said Morag Gillie, an IHFA campaigner who attended the occupation.

She added: “Larger flats are gold-dust. It’s virtually impossible to get three- or four-bed flats. The conditions that larger families are living in are horrific, and there’s nowhere to place them, and they’re permanently overcrowded.”

Housing campaigners outside the block during Saturday’s protest

The flats are owned by the Ministry of Justice (MoJ) and were previously used by Pentonville prison officers.

Developers have previously attempted to buy the flats, but were knocked back by the council as the plans did not allocate 50 per cent of the flats as genuinely affordable housing.

Grace Lally, a Housing Rebellion campaigner who occupied the flats, said: “To see a government-owned building being left to fall into disrepair in the middle of the housing crisis, it’s disgusting. It’s two fingers to the people on the housing waiting list.

“The Ministry of Justice thinks nothing of the flats sitting empty until they can cash in on the land value, and get planning permission to redevelop them as luxury flats. It’s disgusting when private developers do this, it’s a scandal when a government does it.

“When we see the simple measures that could be taken and aren’t, it just makes you despair. The antidote of despair is action, and we’re trying to force action from the government.”

What the flats look like inside

IHFA are calling on the MoJ to hand over the flats to Islington Council as the borough has a housing waiting list of 14,000 people.

They have organised a petition that they plan to hand over to the MoJ in person, to put pressure on them to solve what they see as an urgent issue: “We’re in a housing and health crisis. All the evidence shows that in countries where they’ve got good housing, they’ve got better health. We know that people are dying due to the quality of their homes.”

Deputy council chief Labour councillor Diarmaid Ward said: “In 2019 we came to an agreement with the Ministry of Justice to use these homes as temporary accommodation for homeless families but the MoJ pulled out at the last minute.

“Since then the Ministry of Justice have refused to make a full planning application. If they did, 50 per cent of these homes would need to be genuinely affordable for local families in line with our planning policies.

“If the MoJ want to talk about how we can work together to get these desperately needed homes back into use, my door is always open. I will happily meet with them as early as this afternoon.”

A Ministry of Justice spokesperson said: “An application to turn the site into new housing was turned down by Islington Borough Council in 2021 so we are continuing to look for the best way to use the property.”