Holding Peabody to account

Last week, housing campaigner Glyn Robbins and Peabody Chief Executive Brendan Sarsfield responded in the Islington Tribune to growing concerns that Peabody won’t be held to account on their Holloway prison site promises.

Robbins is concerned that the site, which could have been kept in public ownership for council homes, is now in the hands of a private company and unaccountable to the Community Plan for Holloway campaign. In light of Mayor of London, Sadiq Khan’s track record on housing policies, Robbins calls on the community to keep the pressure on politicians to not let developers ‘get away with business as usual’.

Sarsfield’s response said that Peabody will be holding an ongoing consultation throughout the planning and construction phases and that they will be holding a series of consultation events.

The view from the London Review of Books

Holloway prison site also featured in Mary Hannity’s review of Bad Girls: The Rebels and Renegades of Holloway Prison by Caitlin Davies in the latest issue of London Review of Books. Hannity places the history of Holloway women’s prison in the wider context of the history and trends in imprisoning women, leading to a brief description of Holloway’s current status after being bought by Peabody.

What next?

The Community Plan is now an independent organisation. It is no longer a project of the Centre for Crime and Justice Studies and we will stop sending updates to our mailing list at the end of May 2019. To keep up-to-date with developments, sign up to the new mailing list here.