Unfair to council staff

Published: 17 June, 2010

• IT is a gross impertinence for demonstrators to hold up placards stating that disability discrimination and racism killed Jennyfer Spencer.

Camden has one of the most caring and outstanding social services organisations in the country and is the absolute opposite of racist when one considers all they try to do to ensure ethnic equality in their employment and in their publicity.

It is quite evident from reports that their officers bent over backwards to try to help, even consulting their legal experts as to how far they could go in trying to contact her.

It is no good blaming them for failure to provide suitable housing if they made numerous offers and she refused all of them because she wanted to stay in the district.

You can hardly expect them to throw someone out of a suitable ground-floor flat if there were no others available.

Bearing in mind the desperate housing shortage for ordinary folk in Camden it is hardly surprising that specially-equipped, ground-floor, flats are at a premium.

Your persistence in running this story is distasteful and grossly unfair to Camden staff.

The woman died in unknown circumstances which have already been thoroughly investigated by the council (who tried to do everything to prevent it), the police and the coroner and any further inquiry is unlikely to come up with any more answers, cost a great deal of time and money and occupy officers who need to be looking after other people who are in equal need.

Let the woman rest in peace.

What does need investigating is how some of the money in her special allowance account has apparently disappeared after her death.
JOHN STRATTON
Thurlow Road, NW3