Is the Mayor Backtracking on Her Promises to the Residents of Brimstone House?
Do you remember those far off days when everything seemed so easy; when answers to complex problems seemed to float off the tongue of aspiring politicians. Alas, those days have gone and the mayor has discovered that real problems need real solutions.
In May 2022, residents of Brimstone House/Victoria St, (the group we formerly we called the Focus E15 Mums), turned up at the AGM of the council and held a protest in the middle of the AGM.
Ashamed at the callous and oppressive way a single security guard asked the protestors to sit and stop shouting, the mayor suspended the council AGM so that she could talk to the protesters.
After the hiatus, the AGM resumed with the mayor promising to rehouse all of the residents. This apparently came as something of a shock to both the Cabinet Member for Housing and the Director of Housing, neither of whom had been involved in the decision and neither of whom had any idea about how this was to be achieved.
We understood that a plan would be drawn up before the end of July.
July has passed and the plan to rehouse the residents seems to have dropped down the priority list for the mayor. Indeed, if campaigners are to be believed, the mayor is backtracking on her promises.
“The Mayor and the Director of Housing admit that they can’t give a guarantee that everyone will get permanent housing, they are not allowed to implement a rent cap*, the Right to Buy** has taken away council housing, they are looking at the impact of overcrowding in the private rented sector, especially on children, that the standards of the landlord licensing scheme are not good enough, and repeat again and again and again that there are 34,000 people in Newham on the housing waiting list and the council must act legally and fairly and therefore can’t make everyone in Victoria Street top priority.”
So, it seems that not only has the mayor reneged on her election promises, (see below), but she is now seeking to renege on her direct promise made only three months ago to get all of the families out of Brimstone House.
* In her campaign pledges Fiaz promised “introduce rent controls in the private sector”
** and to “End Right to Buy”
It seems that her empty promises are now coming back to haunt her; some people it appears actually believed that she was going to do this and now feel somewhat aggrieved.