Pic: nottingham.indymedia.org/system/photo/2...
Nottingham City Council leader Jon Collins was targeted by anti-evictions campaigners who demonstrated outside his home on Hucknall Road yesterday. Collins was singled out as having made threats to evict the families of those found to be involved in the August riots. Campaigners have also leafleted affected families offering practical support. They call the moves to evict council tenants “spiteful” and say they should be fought.
Newswire: No Evictions campaign targets Jon Collins | No Riot Evictions | Stop Jon Collins’ vindictive evictions
Previous feature: Post-riot repression hits Nottingham
Following the August disturbances Collins and Nottingham City Homes Chief Executive, Chris Langstaff, released a statement that “Any council tenants involved in recent violence across Nottingham could face eviction from their homes.” Collins was quoted specifically targeting the parents of youths involved in “violence”.
Parents have a responsibility to control the young people living in their home. If young people living in your home have been involved in the violence over the past few days, they are putting your tenancy at risk.
Campaigners against the evictions have highlighted what they call the “hypocrisy” of Collins’ crackdown on council tenants who have not been involved in wrongdoing, whilst his council dropped any investigation into the Nottingham City Homes (NCH) scandal of corrupt reallocation of housing earlier this year. NCH was found to have “wrongly given homes to some employees, their relatives, partners and friends” in an Audit Commission report published in 2009. One such house was inadvertently occupied by squatters in 2006. They were illegally and violently evicted by NCH workers, with the support of the police.
At the time the scandal broke, Jon Collins said he was “appalled” and that he would “not hesitate” to take disciplinary action against staff found to have been involved in the corruption. However, in January this year the investigation was dropped with only one member of staff being given a “final written warning” and one agency worker being fired. None of the homes were ever repossessed and the full scale of the scandal remains unknown. The City Council have refused to involve the police in the matter.
In June, evidence of Collins’ own involvement was unearthed by the Nottingham Post: "Jon Collins’ secretary asked a housing officer for “a favour” to help one of council leader’s constituents gain a place on the waiting list for a new home" during 2005. Collins denied that he was personally involved.
Other members of the council were also called into question, notably Councillor Brian Grocock, the former Lord Mayor, who claimed an applicant was his grandson in order to get him a house sooner than he should have. The council’s monitoring officer defended Grocock because “he did not believe Mr Grocock’s actions in 2005 had broken the councillors’ code of conduct”.
The threat of riot evictions is not unique. The City Council has a policy of evicting the families of tenants who are deemed to be anti-social. In justification, Councillor Alex Norris, portfolio holder for area working, cleansing and community safety, echoed David Cameron’s mantra that “Social housing is a privilege, not a right.” This is disputed by the No Evictions campaign:
Council house tenants are merely paying a reasonable rent for their home to the local authority, unlike a private tenant who is paying an unreasonable rent to a private landlord. Who is subsidising who?
The No Evictions leaflet concludes:
If the council continues in its efforts to make families and children homeless in order to look tough on crime they can be assured that there are members of the public in Nottingham who will respond and make their disgust felt.
