Campaigners want affordable homes at the prison site

• THE 14,000 Islington residents on the council’s housing waiting list, as well as those who are homeless in the borough, must have been dismayed by Calum Fraser’s report about Peabody backing down on its original commitment to provide 42 per cent social housing (understood at council-equivalent rents), reducing it to 35 per cent on the Holloway Prison site development, (Prison site homes vow is ‘diluted’, September 11).

So now 25 per cent (instead of the original 18 per cent) of the remainder of the “affordable” housing on the site will be for higher-income households (London living rent and shared ownership), well beyond the means of the majority of the thousands of Islington households in housing need. And 40 per cent will be for private sale.

As London mayor, Sadiq Khan has not made public the terms of the loan agreement between the GLA and Peabody for purchasing the site, we are not sure whether Peabody is in breach of any legal obligations.

Meanwhile this month Peabody are once again auctioning off desperately-needed homes for social rent in street properties in Islington: 53c Oakley Road, N1 and 14b Fonthill Road, N4. In London as a whole, just this month, they are putting up 19 such homes for auction.

Readers may also be interested to know that the online journal Inside Housing of September 11 reported Peabody’s turnover for 2019-20 as being £662million, showing a 4 per cent swing away from homes for social rent to sales. Peabody’s surplus was £122million.

George Peabody, founder of the Peabody Trust, having experienced a deprived childhood and limited schooling, once wrote: “I can only do to those that come under my care, as I could have wished circumstances had permitted others to have done by me.”

So much for Peabody’s social mission. George Peabody must be turning in his grave!

JENNY KASSMAN
Islington Homes for All