The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Work starts on £7m shop centre plan
Peterborough City Council’s deputy leader was in the firing line Parnwell had the chance to grill him at a public meeting hosted air their grievances.
Development on a £7milllion expansion at Serpenting Green shopping centre has begun. The Hampton centre will house a bigger Next store and an M&S Foodhall with the creation of 100 new jobs.
Angry Parnwell residents facing eviction from their homes used a public meeting to criticise the lack of support they have received from Peterborough City Council.
The residents, who are among 74 tenants being evicted from St Michael’s Gate by a private firm, took aim at the council with one revealing that she had gone into debt to finance a move to a new home.
The council has faced severe criticism after the Peterborough Telegraph revealed it will pay nearly £1 million a year to the company Stef and Philips to use the vacated properties as temporary accommodation for homeless families.
Stef and Philips is the managing agent for the properties which were bought by Paul Simon Magic Homes, although both companies share a director.
Last Friday some of the residents facing eviction got the chance to grill a leading figure from the council for the first time in deputy leader Councillor Wayne Fitzgerald.
Speaking at the Parnwell Community Centre in Saltersgate, one evicted tenant made reference to the revelation in last week’s PT that nine tenants from St Michael’s Gate have declared themselves as homeless with the council.
She said: “You have nine members of our street already on your door step. I don’t know how many more you’re going to end up having, and are you basically going to end up putting them in the same house?”
One woman who has gone into debt said: “I had my notice of possession on August Bank Holiday. I have to be out of my property in two weeks’ time.
“The first time that any support, any letter, any communication, anything, has come from either the council or anywhere, has been in the last two weeks when this story hit the media.”
Another audience member said: “These people have been really good. They have lived opposite me for over 15 years and I’ ve not had a bit of trouble from them and it’s disgusting they’re being chucked out.”
Another speaker said plans to convert the number of properties from 74 into 98 would create a ghetto of‘ problem tenants .’
The hour-long meeting, hosted by MP for Peterborough Stewart Jackson, was attended by approximately 80 people. The most anger came from the insistence that if the council did not rent the properties for city homeless, another authority would.
Mr Jackson said the evic- tions are“morally repugnant.” He added: “What they [the council] say is, if Peterborough City Council pull out, then what will happen is Luton Borough Council will decamp their homeless people to this area.”
An audience member replied: “Is that guaranteed? Because to me that sounds like a veiled threat.”
Cllr Fitzgerald, who was joined at the front by ward councillors Azher Iqbal and Marcus Sims, although neither man spoke, said: “It was clearly put to the cabinet that if you don’t do this, somebody else will. These people already have a track record, and they are in contract with eight other local authorities. It is their business model, so rest assured they would.
“We think it stinks, but if we do nothing those people who have been given notice to quit their tenancy will still be required to do so.”
Cllr Fitzgerald said the council would save £1.8 million a year if it can rent the properties as temporary accommodation.
As the meeting ended, one audience member standing by the exit told the room: “What is happening here is what the people of Germany did to the people of Poland in 1938.” That remark drew applause.
Speaking afterwards Jelana Stevic, a resident of St Michael’s Gate since 1996, said: “I think the law needs to be changed so private owners of properties like this can’t be allowed to make money from a social situation.
“They are moving figures on paper and not seeing the lives and the community they are ripping apart.”