Green candidate faced sudden eviction during council election campaign

WHILE teaming up with Labour’s Tom Copley last week for a City Hall motion aimed at convincing Sadiq Khan to campaign against sudden ‘no fault’ evictions on the private rental market, Councillor Sian Berry told the London Assembly that one of her Green Party council election candidates had suffered this very fate right in the middle of the Town Hall elections.

Cllr Berry, whose party were jousting with Labour in Highgate in May, one of the closest fought wards in Camden, said: “I’ve lost count of the number of friends and colleagues who’ve had a ‘section 21’ eviction, often at the last possible time they would’ve chosen to move. It’s so common.”

She added: “One of my council candidate colleagues, Kirsten [de Keyser, pictured] got a ‘section 21’ and was made to move home a few weeks before election cay, counting her out of working in our ward right when it would’ve made the most difference. She had no choice. I’m still a renter, and I’m now at quite an advanced age and Kirsten isn’t ‘generation rent ‘either. She has close to a couple of decades on me, and she really just wants a secure home.”

The party were unable to move beyond one councillor at the polls – Cllr Berry, herself – with Labour winning the other two seats in Highgate through Oliver Lewis and Anna Wright.