Labour MP Stella Creasy is running her “awards” for a second year running, which will name the best and worst estate and letting agents in her London constituency of Walthamstow.
The highly controversial awards last year received only about 200 votes.
They also raised the question as to whether a local MP should take it upon themselves to damage businesses in their own constituency.
The results of last year’s awards were also called into question.
A new business in Walthamstow, Stow Brothers, was voted best agent, whereas Central Estate Agents was named “worst” despite having been established since 1992 and having the largest market share.
At the time, Stow Brothers had just eight properties for sale, compared with Central Estate Agents’ 110.
Central Estate Agents was handed the “worst” award when Creasy and some 60 placard-waving protesters barged unannounced into the office.
On her website, Creasy – who ran for the deputy leadership of the Labour party last year and came second to Tom Watson – is now inviting people to “nominate your local housing heroes and horrors now”.
She says: “House prices in Walthamstow have doubled over the last eight years, as people have been priced out of other parts of London and so turned their attention to outer London boroughs.
“These problems in turn create shortages for social and affordable housing, as many within the private sector are encouraged to speculate on rents and house prices.
“In turn, concerns about the quality of housing continue to grow, with many local residents being charged extortionate rents for properties which require repairs to be habitable.”
Categories include best letting agent, worst letting agent, most shocking behaviour from a letting agent, best and worst estate agent, and most shocking claim made by an estate agent.
There is also a “special MP award for the most outrageous example of behaviour in Walthamstow’s housing market”.
The ballot will close on Friday, February 19, with an “award ceremony” – the exact nature of which is unspecified – the following day.
A special guest will be Labour mayoral candidate Sadiq Khan.
Maybe he might like to rethink his attendance? He could always read this
Comments (5)
The words bandwagon and publicity come to mind. We already have a plethora of awards for good estate agents – well the ones that have the time to enter that is and we have the NAEA, RICS and TPO to penalise the bad ones. What we really now need is a publicity seeking MP with nothing better to do than make a lot of noise.
Best watch PMQ’s to see a load of children, earning vast sums of money producing more noise than Concorde taking off !!
Ms Creasy is cutting her nose off to spite her face while also maiming local businesses, staff and business owners.
Sorry, but what is the advantage to these awards?
A rather obvious answer here – it gives under employed M.P.’s something to occupy themselves with. (At public expense of course) A good suggestion would be to put all the hours that would have been put into a worthless completion into doing the job that one is paid to do……….. not this.
I think the estate agents should hold an annual award for best and worse MP.