Published: 13 April, 2012

• IT is hard to take Councillor Terry Stacy seriously as the Lib Dems’ housing spokesman (Why it’s time to stop treating our tenants like second-class citizens, April 6).

He claims he wanted to ask tenants about axing Homes for Islington (HfI). Yet at the HfI chief executive’s leaving do a couple of weeks ago, he was full of praise for HfI.

He went out of his way to say that he disagreed with the decision to bring housing back into the council and that he would have kept HfI.

It is also hard to take him seriously when he questions the recent changes to door-to-door recycling in some blocks.

Cllr Stacy claims to be a housing expert and sits on the London Fire Brigade board yet seems to be unaware of recent fire guidance, following the 2009 fire at Southwark’s Lakanal House, which was very clear about the danger to residents in enclosed blocks of recycling on doorsteps.

If he really wants to talk about treating tenants fairly, perhaps he should spend more of his time lobbying anyone with influence over the Tories or Lib Dems in government.

His colleagues in government are raising social rents to up to 80 per cent of market rent and ending lifetime tenancies.

Why is he keeping quiet about this? Perhaps because he is on the board of housing association One Housing, where he apparently supports plans to push ahead with higher rents and shorter tenancies.

Cllr Stacy’s attempts to criticise the Labour council, which is building council homes and which is the only council in London to be protecting social rents, may well be an attempt to distract from his own decision to betray the tenants whose rights he once claimed to champion.

CLLR MICK O’SULLIVAN
Labour, Finsbury Park ward