• MANY London Labour councils are selling or demolishing council estates, green spaces, and community halls to replace them mostly with expensive private housing.

The London Borough of Islington’s leasing of the Finsbury Estate’s bin store for a commercial laundry, though, must be a first. This isn’t a trivial issue.

Without enclosed spaces to hold the household waste of around 400 Finsbury Estate flats, we are increasingly left with open and overflowing bins being placed in the public walkway through the estate and at the edge of our children’s five-aside kick-about pitch.

The resultant rat infestation leaves us with a serious health and safety problem. What’s more, the management and maintenance of the estate has been, for some years, as poor as it was in the early 2000s when the Labour council was, at that time, seeking to sell-off some of its large and neglected estates to housing associations.

Our TRA (tenants’ and residents’ association) is currently having to fight as hard as it did then, to get the services that the council is obliged to deliver.

If the London Borough of Islington’s ultimate intention is to follow other Labour councils
in London that are clearing out council tenants though estate demolitions, they will have an even bigger fight on their hands with tenants of our estate.

PHIL COSGROVE
Joseph Trotter Close
Finsbury Estate, EC1