In the early hours of 26th of August, residents of the Spectrum Building of Freshwater Road, Dagenham awoke to a fire tearing through our building. Over 80 of us were forced to evacuate our homes and we are lucky to be alive.  Fire alarms failed to go off, leaving us risking our own safety to wake up our neighbours. Fire escape routes were padlocked shut and the removal of cladding from the outside of our building had been delayed potentially worsening the disaster. The building is too unsafe for us to return to our homes or collect our belongings. Losing your home and all your belongings overnight is everyone's worst nightmare. But since losing our homes to the fire, we are living in constant insecurity. Join our call to Barking and Dagenham Council to demand security for tenants of the Spectrum Building Despite being temporarily housed in hotels and hostels, every week we are being made to pack up any belongings we have, check out of our rooms and wait to find out where we will be sleeping that night.  Alongside this, we are facing the threat of being forced into unaffordable accommodation outside of London, costing thousands of pounds we don't have, miles away from our work, schools, families and communities - at a time when we need them most.  This is a kick in the teeth after all we have been through. It means that at the start of every week we will not know where we will be sleeping that night. To those of us with young children and babies, we have to uproot them again and again and face uncertainty about our futures. We are being forced to miss work risking our employment and being put under ongoing stress and anxiety. We are families, workers, residents and members of the community and we have lost everything. We need a safe and secure place to call home while we get back on our feet.  Please help us by calling on Dagenham Council to stop these cruel and unnecessary practices and to make sure Spectrum Fire Residents have a safe place to call home.  Sign our petition now. 

We are, almost daily, reminded of the chronic housing shortage yet there are many houses in the UK which stand empty for a proportion of the year or are only owned to generate income by being holiday lets or Air B&Bs. This not only inflates house prices but also denies many young families the opportunity to buy their own home in the area in which they were born and raised. In the meanwhile plans proceed to build ever more houses on what are, currently, green field sites. A solution could be to increase both Council Tax on non residential properties and Income tax on the income generated. This might free up properties for first time buyers particularly in tourist areas where the shortage is greatest 

Tony Gurney felt motivated  to create this petition after hearing the tragic news about young Aalim Makail falling from the 15th floor of his family’s home in Plaistow.  (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/c4n1gn0qgdmo).  This is something that no family should have to experience and realistically some simple easy changes might make a big difference. Words do not describe the devastation Aalim’s family must be feeling adequately, or any other family in that situation.  One of the reasons that Tony was inspired to create this petition is because he helped a little girl who fell 60 feet from a window in 2016. She survived because of Tony’s  NHS training as an ODP, coupled the with optional First Aid Training provided by the NHS, and the support of the London Ambulance Service, London Air Ambulance and the NHS hospital they were taken to.  Previous Governments have done nothing to ensure tragic accidents like this never happen again. Tony still suffers from trauma symptoms to this day. He has wanted to try and take action to address this serious health and safety issue but did not feel able to due to his own trauma and anger. Hearing about Aalim’s tragic death made him determined to try and address this issue. Tony asked his RSO for help in addressing this issue. Tony reports that he was yelled at, and told it was ‘none of his business’. Tony’s GP referred him to the Mental Health Team for a PTSD assessment, which unfortunately wasn’t undertaken at the time. It has taken Tony approximately 7 years to get help and he felt abandoned and alone. He does not want this to happen to anyone else in the future. Tony’s  GP and Local Council have no obligation in law to communicate with each other.  “I’m told by my GP that Council’s just throw their letters in the bin and ignore them anyway, hence paragraph 6. I’ve asked for help repeatedly and have been told the guidelines are more important than me and our safety. The stress of the situation is also making my Crohn’s, Fibromyalgia and ADHD worse.” Tony has finally started the PTSD Therapy, and he is hoping that by starting this petition it might help other people who have been through this experience in their healing, including himself, and to make sure adequate support is in place for the future. We also hope for all children to be protected and to ensure no family ever goes through what these families have in the future. (Please note, we hope the consequence of paragraph 6 would be that it helps anyone with medical housing issues) There is also another cost in children falling from windows in such tragic circumstances, and that is the cost to the staff of Emergency Services and NHS. They have to deal with something that is totally avoidable, and extremely traumatic. According to Rigas, “emergencies involving children are often considered to have a greater psychological impact on healthcare workers” and “The prevalence of PTSD in healthcare workers in critical departments reaches 30%, much higher than the general population (3.5%)”. He goes on to state that “According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), over 80% of staff are emotionally and physically exhausted, while 45% of nurses reported not receiving enough emotional support”. (“Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder Symptoms among Paediatric Healthcare Workers” by Rigas, Jan 2024  https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC10801477/ ). Current Law states that window restrictors are ‘recommended’ rather than compulsory. According to Pyramid Solutions, “There are no laws in the United Kingdom that require window restrictors to be installed in buildings. However, the UK government recommends that window restrictors be installed in buildings with children under the age of five, as well as buildings with vulnerable adults, to prevent accidents and injuries from falls.” (Pyramid Solutions June 2024 https://pyramidsolution.co.uk/blog/window-restrictors/ )  Stopping a child falling from their home should not be an optional extra. It should be a legal requirement.  The fact nothing has been done to change this situation is a sign of institutional negligence. Local councils and central government could have done something to change this time and time again, but they have failed. Sir Kier Starmer has said he wants to reinstate faith in politics and move to a model of preventative medicine and this could help him achieve these aims. Further, in light of Renoy Ellis’ fall in Kennington, and, because of Emma Ramsay’s fall in Ibiza (even though she is an adult) and the incident at the Tate Modern in 2019, we ask for a review of Balcony Safety Law and hope that this conversation can be happen at an international level.  I hope that you will sign this petition in order to make sure we do everything that we can to avoid these tragedies from ever happening again and to help anyone affected by them with their healing. You might help change a lot of people’s lives and save their sanity as well as their children. Thank you  Tony Gurney aka Groover The Barbarian (With thanks to Jackie Frances for her help with wording the petition)

I speak as a tenant of Westminster City Council - to which my landlord had hired a notoriously reckless and dangerous electrical company {{OAKRAY LIMITED}} as their contractor (6 years ago, approx). And there is *no doubt* that the landlord was *fully aware* of how *bad* this company actually are, due to their widely known reputation and very low customer ratings. But yet, despite this, they still hired them. And it is clear that they hired them for just the *ONE* reason only - that they were the {{{CHEAPEST}}} option available - because they have {{{NOTHING ELSE}}} going for them. All they ever do is cause {{{DAMAGE}}} with every job they do around the area, and then a more reputable company has to come out and *fix* their damage and blundering everywhere they have been.  By now It has gone way beyond a joke, but yet the council *still insists* on *keeping* them and are also *defending* them regardless of *anything* they do wrong. And they *refuse* to see *reason* - hence Oakray still continues to run amok. However, more {{{SHOCKINGLY}}} they (WCC) have this policy (which I have witnessed within a written document) that they do not investigate on their own *criminal activity*!!! And even the police cannot investigate them either. Plus most lawyer's firms don't want to know (it's an insane situation).  This awful/rotten business with Westminster's involvement with *Oakray* first began when the Government made a decision to implement electrical safety checks to Council tenants to which landlords had to comply (by law). But obviously the Council did not want the *expense*, which had resulted in their hiring this wretched company *Oakray*, due to their *cheapness*. Following this, the *worst* thing happened - they came to my flat (back in 2018) for the purpose of doing a *safety* check, but all they did was just rip out the Earth-connection from my circuit-board and run - which was the most *dangerous/lethal* thing to do within an AC electrical supply. This resulted in a *reverse-polarity* (otherwise known as a hot-neutral-reverse) of my electricity supply, in which everything was running haywire and my boiler was also shorted out - which left me without heating (in the freezing cold of winter). And I am battling a chronic illness/disablement. And so this was a nightmare. They came to do a *safety* check and turned my flat into a {{{DEATHTRAP}}} (it was perfectly safe before they entered). And the landlord had left me in this *dangerous* situation for {{{FIVE MONTHS}}} before fixing this damage. And I only survived this danger through *LUCK* alone - not any help/assistance from *them*!!! In this case what was done to me was *criminal*, on the part of all concerned.  I did in-fact submit a formal complaint at that time (well within their time limitation) but it was *evaded* and swept under the rug. And I was not given any *redress* nor *justice* for all the *misery* I was put through, plus I could quite easily have lost *my life*. But much later when I tried to push forward with my complaint, they used the *excuse* that it was outside of their deadline - even despite the *gravity* of this case. However, if this experience, alone, wasn't horrid and unpalatable enough, the problems I am having with Oakray have not gone away, and still continue to this day - eg, for all these years down the line, since then, they have been going into the electrical intake cupboard on the ground floor of my communal block and had ripped out my TV ariel connection, on *numerous* occasions - with the last incident being less than a fortnight ago. But yet WCC don'tgive a damn. The situation is that whilst they have reckless *Oakray* out there doing jobs and causing so much damage, *no-one* will be safe - because they are a dangerous liability and a major accident waiting to happen.     

Buying your first home is a pipe dream for the majority. Rents are sky high. There has to be a radical rethink if ever this problem is to be solved

Have you ever been charged a fee for not having something? Canal & River Trust announced on 19th September 2023 that from 1st April 2024 it will impose an escalating 5% to 25% surcharge over 4 years on the licence fees of boats without a permanent mooring, and increased surcharges for wide-beam boats. This is on top of above-inflation increases to all boat licence fees over the next 4 years, starting with a 6% increase in April 2024. Section 17 of the British Waterways Act 1995 makes it clear that the licence to use the waterways can be held either with or without a permanent mooring. MORE INFORMATION Canal & River Trust has already raised boat licence fees by 8% in 2022 and 9% in 2023. The 6% increase and surcharges are on top of that already vastly inflated sum. Taking the escalating surcharges together with annual above-inflation increases, we estimate that by 2028, the licence for a narrowboat will cost 64% more, and for a wide-beam 130% more, if they don’t have a permanent mooring. We think this surcharge is unfair. It penalises a minority in favour of the majority. We are only 20% of the boats, yet Canal & River Trust want us to pay a surcharge to keep fees down for the majority of licence payers. The surcharge is a direct attack on our nomadic way of life, designed to pressurise us to move off the water. It will generate 0.6% of Canal & River Trust’s total income. Canal & River Trust says it aims to “balance pricing and affordability” in a way which is “fair” to all boaters. It would be much fairer to add another 1% to all 35,000 licences, instead of picking on a minority of 7,000 boats. The surcharge is not about raising finance, it’s about marginalising our community. Most of us live on our boats, and many will be at risk of losing our homes if we can’t afford the licence fee. Socio-economic change has made living on the waterways without a permanent mooring the only route to affordable housing for many people. We are on the lowest incomes of all boaters. If a boat dweller cannot afford to license their boat, their home can be seized, removed and sold by Canal & River Trust under Section 8 of the British Waterways Act 1983. Please sign our petition and help us to make sure the surcharge is defeated now!

Hostile architecture perpetuates systemic inequality by excluding and marginalising homeless individuals from public spaces, reinforcing stigma, and violating basic human rights. It's a manifestation of a larger issue of homelessness and housing insecurity that affects vulnerable populations worldwide. By advocating for compassionate solutions and inclusive urban design, we can create communities where everyone is valued and respected, regardless of their housing status. Together, we can make a meaningful difference in the lives of those who are most in need.

Currently private landlords need no reason to evict you. They just need to give you two months' notice and you have to uproot your life and find a new place to live. No-fault evictions let landlords bully tenants into staying quiet about disrepair or accepting unaffordable rent increases. It means you can never really know if you can trust your landlord or how long you can stay in your home. Five years after they promised to scrap them, new laws are being held up by a few dozen MPs who want landlords to keep calling the shots. But because of support from other parties, the Prime Minister has the votes he needs to make the laws reality, but newspapers are reporting that he's still refusing to schedule the vote because of a small number of rebel MPs. If enough of us come together, we can force the Prime Minister to do what’s right and ban no-fault evictions NOW!

This is equally if not worse than the post office scandal The government is aware Leaseholders are trapped in homes they cannot sell, there have been suicides, bankruptcies, severe mental health issues, all because freeholders are literally fleecing LH We cannot sell, mortgage and the properties are not maintained? Wales, and England are the only countries in the world with this feudal system, which the conservatives will NOT change as most are freeholders themselves

This seems to be a huge problem at the moment for people of all walks of life. If you join this campaign and sign the petition we could together make a change so people can more easily find a home to live in. The more people who sign, the better..Especially if they are being forced to, as I and many others are right now. Sign this petition to get the Government to change this awful and unattainable for some, requirement for a Guarantor and upfront costs, which we don't all have, in order to have a roof over our heads. People are being forced to find new homes in too short a space of time ordered out in 2 months time by our Landlords..and fighting for homes to rent with hundreds or more of other people in a 'comperition'. Let's get this changed.

Over the last decade, we have participated in hundreds of meetings, investing our time, energy, and money in the fight for our basic rights. We attempted to collaborate with Newham Council by developing our community plan and setting up a co-production Steering Group. We waged a determined battle to rid ourselves of MEARs, the outsourced landlord that charged high rents for living in disrepair. Although we successfully compelled Newham Council to transfer the management back to its own hands, our unsafe living conditions and uncertainty continues. Despite winning investments for our homes following a petition from over 90% of residents, our housing issues persist, as the root causes are often ignored and we are left in the uncertainty and insecurity of temporary tenancies. Our physical and mental health has suffered from the stress of insecure tenancies, living in unsafe homes and the closure of community spaces and high streets. Many among us, including our children, have been left disabled or chronically ill due to these living conditions. Each morning brings the uncertainty of receiving a letter that could uproot us and place us in another temporary property outside the area. We face the threat of eviction if we refuse these offers and want to stay in our homes and community. Given these exceptional circumstances, we are asking Rokhsana Fiaz (Mayor of Newham), Darren Levy (Director of Housing), and Donna Morelli (Assistant Director of Housing) to use their authority and exercise discretion. The urgency of our situation cannot wait any longer for the regeneration. We need them to facilitate the transfer of all our temporary council tenancies to permanent, secure council tenancies. We need your support to get them to listen. Please show your solidarity by signing this petition and spreading the word. We all deserve a safe and permanent home. #PermanentSafeHomesNow #KeepOurCommunityTogether See full demands here: https://bit.ly/PEACH-demands

Students are facing financial struggles and feel exploited by Unite Students in Joseph Stones accommodation. Considering the substantial amount we are paying, the return on our investment appears to be disproportionately low. This raises questions about the allocation of our funds and prompts us to inquire where exactly our money is being utilised.