Bruce Herry outside the council’s headquarters

A DISABLED man parked his wheelchair outside Camden Council’s headquarters and said he would not leave until he was given somewhere safe and accessible to live.

Bruce Lawrence Herry, 52, grew up in Camden Road and worked as a martial arts teacher until last May, when he was stabbed in the head and left with life-changing injuries.

Mr Herry told the New Journal that since leaving hospital, he has been shunted from place to place – including stints in Covent Garden, King’s Cross, Waterloo, and Harrow – while he waits for the council to find him a permanent home.

“I can’t take it any more,” said Mr Herry, a father-of-four who attended St Aloysius’ College as a teenager and the Rosary primary school in Haverstock Hill. “I’m no angel but I’m not deserving of this. I’m disabled now, I have no carer to look after me, and the people here think it’s a joke.”

Bruce Herry before a stab attack was left in a wheelchair 

Mr Herry was speaking to the New Journal outside the council’s offices in Pancras Square last Friday.

He had travelled there from his current accommodation in Harrow, where he said he spends 20 hours a day confined to a single bed that is shorter than his body, as plaster and dust from holes in the walls and ceiling fall into his eyes and mouth.

Instead of the help he had hoped to get, he said that Camden’s security removed him from the building and threw his bags onto the ground outside.

“There is no reason to do this to anybody,” he added. “I am not going back [to Harrow], and I’m not leaving until they give me my own place.”

Mr Herry’s family friend – who has supported him through the injury, but did not wish to be named – said Bruce has been “through hell and back”.

She added: “Camden don’t want to deal with people with complex needs. I have written so many emails, I’ve spoken to seven different managers trying to get him what he needs. He has missed so much of his physio because they have moved him around so many times. They’re pushing us from pillar to post, and [last Friday] it was the last straw when he took himself down there.

“We have repeated ourselves over and over again like broken records and no one hears us. They don’t care. It’s making him more depressed, more angry, more vulnerable, more sick. It’s just inhumane.”

Bruce Herry in the New Journal in 2007

Before Mr Herry’s injury last May, his friend said, training with clients and working out in the gym “was his world”.

“He was a funny character, a strong character,” she said. “He would help anyone. He had that stern exterior about him but people warmed to him regardless. He just loved life before this – always out and about, loved jogging in the mornings, loved the outdoors. He was always keeping busy, very much a people’s person. Now, he’s a trapped soul.”

Mr Herry is not the first tenant to bring his housing complaints directly to Camden Council.

In 2022, NHS nurse Ellen Nkomo locked herself to a pillar at Camden’s offices in Pancras Square telling staff she had been fobbed off for years over housing repairs, and had no choice but to take her complaints straight to the top.

Camden’s chief executive at that time, Jenny Rowlands, later appeared and made a series of promises after a lengthy discussion with Ms Nkomo, who unlocked herself after an hour.

Back in 2013, community worker Elaine Donnellon handcuffed herself to the railings inside the old Town Hall over the council’s failure to clean up abusive pavement graffiti about her.

A Camden Council spokesperson said: “We want every resident to have a decent home that meets their needs. Our teams are considering M  Herry’s request for alternative accommodation, with a formal review under way. Our housing and adult social services teams will continue to engage with Mr. Herry while that process is completed.”