Paulette Singer, former community organiser on the West Hendon Estate, got a warm round of applause for this statement that she read out at the Public Inquiry yesterday evening:
1) I am writing this letter in objection to the Compulsory Purchase
Order as the former Community Organiser on the West Hendon estate and ongoing
supporter of the residents group ‘Our West Hendon’.
2) I spent a year and a half working on the West Hendon estate up until
November 2014. My role, paid for by central government as part of the Community
Organisers Programme was ‘building relationships in communities to activate
people and create social and political change through collective action’.
3) Part of my work involved taking on volunteers from within the
community whose role was to assist with the door-to-door listening process. In
March last year a group of these residents formed ‘Our West Hendon’ in a
attempt to both campaign about the perceived unfair treatment residents were
experiencing through the regeneration process and also in order for them to
have a support group in place to deal with individual housing cases. Along with
several volunteers I listened to over 300 people across the estate and in the
local area.