Justice for Leo

Leo Nicholson has been an electrician with Hackney Homes for 12 years. He and his grandmother are being victimised because they stood to Hackney Council’s forced “re-generation” dispersal policy. This policy has been in use for many years on regeneration estates like the one Leo and his Grandmother have lived on since the early 70s.

Effectively what this means is that residents living on estates undergoing regeneration works or demolition are pressured to move away from their local community because the Council want to use part of the estate or site for private renting. Leo and His Grandmother and others tenants opposed this forced dispersal and argued successfully to stay in their local area.

Hackney Council vindictively refused to re-house Leo, either with his Grandmother or separately within the same area so making Leo homeless and it harder for Leo to provide the essential support he had been providing for his 80 year old Grandmother. When Leo was forced to applied to the council for housing as he was advised to, he was not only refused housing but ended up being dismissed– punishing him for his homeless situation that they had caused.

We know Leo is absolutely determined to fight this not only for his grandmother and himself but also so that other hackney workers and residents are not punished in this vindictive way, having their lives and careers casts aside and their name and character scandalized for simply asserting their rights.