Meet the Candidates: Laura Graham the borough’s only Your Party backed independent
With election day looming, we’ve asked the parties standing candidates in Lambeth to put forward a selection of their brightest and best for Brixton Buzz to feature. Your Party, the …
Black News 
With election day looming, we’ve asked the parties standing candidates in Lambeth to put forward a selection of their brightest and best for Brixton Buzz to feature.
Your Party, the new political movement born out of the break between Jeremy Corbyn, Zarah Sultana and Labour, is still in the process of formation. The party is standing just a handful of candidates around the country, with local groups instead supporting individual candidates. As Lambeth’s sole Your Party-endorsed candidate, we asked Laura Graham – standing as a Lambeth Independent Socialists candidate in St Martin’s ward – to write about the issues that matter in her patch.
Born and raised on the St Martin’s Estate, with over twenty years’ experience in the addictions field, here she dismantles the Labour leaflet that landed in her neighbours’ letterboxes – and asks who’s lying about Tulse Hill.
St Martin’s Ward Misleading Labour Leaflet
The Labour St Martin’s Labour Party campaign leaflet states, “Stalled Housing Project Due To Re-start!” claiming that the local outgoing incumbents (Saleha Jaffer and Olga FitzRoy) had applied “sustained pressure” and that a new contractor would restart work on the long delayed Norwood Road housing scheme in the centre of Tulse Hill.
They claim the scheme has planning permission for a mixed development including twelve social housing units and five shared ownership properties. It goes on to say that the developer is Southern Housing but that the work was previously paused when the original developer, Henley Construct, went into administration in April 2023 before moving to voluntary liquidation in 2025.
The directors, Kashif Zamir Usmani and Tariq Zamir Usmani, remain active in 62 other businesses ranging from property development, letting, hotels, cleaning, takeaway food outlets and ironically, completing and finishing building projects.
The original 2020 planning permission for the site on Norwood Road included the above stated number of “affordable” homes plus 28 luxury apartments for Henley Construct to sell. Henley Construct going bust saw Optivo, now Southern Housing, lose £36 million on this development.
The administrators initially estimated that Henley Construct owed £6.7 million to trade and expense creditors, but anticipated that claims would be higher. Southern Housing were advised that they would not receive their money.
In April last year, Southern Housing announced a pause on new development commitments to “de-risk” the business and to focus on existing homes.
Creditors included London Crane Hire who Henley Construct owed £223,009, the owners of the crane that remains rusting away on the abandoned building site.
A second abandoned building site with planning permission is just around the corner on Avenue Park Road. It was announced in 2023 that 76 social housing homes would be built by Metropolitan Thames Valley Housing (MTVH).
Additionally, this development was to include shops, restaurants, cycle storage and landscaping. Yet this site remains derelict and there is no available information as to why…
What is so frustrating about the lack of redevelopment on both sites is the requirement from Transport for London (TfL) for a major development in order to fix the Tulse Hill gyratory. New homes of this scale would have supported the case to regenerate the surrounding area.
On 26th March, Helen Hayes, Labour MP, asked transport minister Lilian Greenwood in Parliament to meet with her to discuss TfL’s refusal to release funding to regenerate the Tulse Hill gyratory unless there is a substantial development in the area… Helen Hayes actually said,
“…that is not the case in Tulse Hill”, confirming that there is no intention of restarting the work.
How much longer do we need to put up with this nonsense? We deserve better!
The residents of Tulse Hill have been campaigning for improved safety on the gyratory for 15 years. Two abandoned sites have had planning permission since 2020 and 2023 respectively. Now we learn from the local MP that there are no building projects planned. Yet, it appears on the St Martin’s Labour leaflet as an announcement repeated by the two new Labour candidates for St Martin’s at recent local hustings.
Who’s lying?
Opinion piece by Laura Graham, Your Party-endorsed independent candidate for St Martin’s ward. Views are the author’s own.
Laura Graham, St Martin’s ward
