Glenda spells it out: There are only three ways of improving crumbling estate

MP Glenda Jackson has told council tenants to stop dreaming about winning direct investment from the government to improve their crumbling homes.
The Hampstead and Highgate Labour MP, who met new housing minister Yvette Cooper on Thursday, says the government will not be coming up with any fresh funding plans to pay for repairs.
She said ministers will stick to three rigid cash strategies – transferring stock to a housing association, a switch to an Arms’-Length Management Organisation (Almo) or using Private Finance Initiatives (PFIs).
The MP said: “You can’t turn around to government and say you have to come up with a fourth or a fifth option, because the three options are already in place.
“Other local authorities, other local authority tenants have decided to go for the Almo road or for the management of their estates to be handed over to another social landlord or for the PFI. Those were the realities, that’s what the vote is about.”
Ms Jackson made the comments during an interview for Tower Blocked, an independent documentary charting the failure of Camden Council and the government to invest in the Chalcot estate in Adelaide Road, Swiss Cottage. It was premiered at the Everyman Cinema in Hampstead on Friday.
In the case of the Chalcot estate, residents backed a PFI scheme to repair their neglected council flats.
But, although the scheme had the blessing of Deputy Prime Minister John Prescott, the £117 million plan dramatically collapsed earlier this year when the Treasury pulled the plug on the deal.
Within the last year, residents of the five 22-storey tower blocks have had to put up with windows which do not shut, lifts which frequently break down, broken heating, infestations of rats and cockroaches, taps which run dry, a series of fires and pirate radio stations broadcasting from their leaky roofs.
But Ms Jackson is still searching for a rescue plan for residents.
A scaled-down PFI project worth about £55 million is currently on the table and a government decision is due next month.
Camden’s housing chief Councillor Raj Chada and Chalcot tenants joined the MP at Thursday’s meeting with Ms Cooper in a bid to convince the government that action must be taken over the Chalcot crisis.
Cllr Chada said: “It was a positive meeting but I will be happier when we have got the money.”
Tower Blocked, made by a team led by community worker Paul Perkins, shows how tenants have been left stranded.
Mr Perkins said: “I wanted to find out why they had refused to invest but I’m not sure we ever did find out for sure. The important thing for me is not the politics but that something is done about the conditions people are living in, and that tenants are given a voice.”
Tenants speaking on film and during a discussion after the screening claimed they had been lied to by the council, with one tenant who got involved in the PFI scheme, Stan Dobinson, explaining he had resigned because he had become “embarrassed” at “misleading people” about the likelihood of improvements.
Cllr Chada – shown on screen pulling out of an interview for the film at the last moment and failing to return calls – braved tenants’ anger at the screening on Friday.
One tenant, Cathy Finch, told him: “I’ve been paying rent for 30 years. I kept my end of the bargain. Why won’t Camden Council keep theirs?”
Cllr Chada said: “I am doing everything I possibly can to lobby for investment at the Chalcot estate.”
Guardian journalists Polly Toynbee and Matt Weaver, and Tory opposition leader Councillor Piers Wauchope agreed to appear in the film but leading housing official Neil Litherland and Cllr Chada both refused.
Film-makers Clayton Harris and Chris Hogan hope to arrange further screenings.
A council press official said: “We welcome the film’s focus on the need for investment in Chalcot, which we have been pressing the government for.
“We were however disappointed that the film chose to take the focus away from the need for investment in Chalcot on to the director of housing’s (Mr Litherland’s) unavailability for interview. Neil Litherland is entitled to holiday he has earned, and the work to take forward a revised scheme for Chalcot has been pushing ahead since the Treasury decision in February.”