Nine months on, riot victims are still waiting for compensation

The riots which started in London nine months ago shocked the world. At the time, I said that we must not let the future of Tottenham slide out of view as the journalists and TV cameras moved away. Yet that is exactly what the government and London Mayor have allowed to happen. Nine months after many Londoners lost everything they owned, over 700 people are still waiting to hear whether they will be compensated, and many others have received derisory offers of support. This is a genuine scandal.

The Riot Damages Act is the piece of legislation used to compensate those whose property is destroyed in riots. Under the Act, victims claim compensation from their local police force, which is in turn reimbursed by the Home Office. In London at least, this system has broken down, despite the Prime Minister’s pledge when Parliament was recalled on 18 August that the government would “help you repair the damage, get your businesses back up and running, and support your communities”. This has manifestly not happened.

A week ago, the Met had received 3427 claims under the Act. Of these, only 912 had been settled – nine months after the riots! This compares particularly badly with the West Midlands, Greater Manchester and Merseyside – all of which have paid out their claims. Niche Mufwankolo, the landlord of the Pride of Tottenham pub, saw his newly-renovated business destroyed on the first evening of the riots. Niche himself was chased around his pub by knife-wielding rioters, and only escaped through a window. His claim was assessed only in February, and he was offered just £22,000 – £70,000 less than he had claimed. As Niche says: “we trusted that the government would look after us. I’m really, honestly, deeply disappointed”.

Niche, and hundreds like him, have every right to be disappointed. Too many of the victims have come through the last nine months feeling like the perpetrators. The insensitivity of the process can be breathtaking. Home Office loss adjusters asked to meet residents of River Heights, on Tottenham High Road, at the very homes that had been utterly destroyed. Victims have seen charitable donations to them deducted from their compensation offers – a real slap in the face for people who have been made to wait over nine months for any government assistance.

These delays have caused untold misery to hundreds of residents and small businesses, many of which may close as a direct result. Angela Hall, who runs a recruitment agency in Tottenham told me: “I eventually received payment just two weeks ago. I submitted my claim in September. In the meantime, business is down an estimated 30%. Last week we held a staff meeting with our employees, who have opted to reduce their working hours so no one has to be made redundant”. These delays could easily have been prevented. On 18 August, the Association of British Insurers offered to coordinate claims for compensation, using expertise not available to civil servants or ministers. The Home Office turned the offer down. When I asked the government to justify this, Home Office Minister Lynne Featherstone could only dredge up the excuse that this would have required a change to primary legislation. Nonsense.

Small businesses have been particularly hard hit by these failures. They were being battered by the storm of the recession before the riots, and that has continued. Banks are not lending to businesses even with a long and profitable track record. Business rates have continued to rise, regardless of these problems. Government policy has not helped – it has focussed entirely on reducing the deficit, at the expense of promoting growth, business and employment. The way that the government administered businesses’ compensation took no account of any of this.

They have been prevented from claiming for business continuity losses through the Act or through government support to local authorities. The average compensation offer under the Act in Haringey has been around 60% of the claim. The extraordinary delays in getting these offers out have made it difficult for victims to appeal – they longer the delay, the more desperate the victims have become, and the less likely they are to appeal. Small businesses, already battered by the recession and the riots themselves, have had to face up to the government’s inability to compensate them in a timely way. As Janet Cooke, who runs a Tottenham estate agents, said: “It will only be a matter of time before we close the doors”.

I raised these points in the House of Commons on Monday and called on the government to make sure that all outstanding claims were paid out by the end of May. I challenged the Prime Minister and Home Secretary on their repeated false promises made to the people of Tottenham, London and all riot victims. Throughout this process, the government has released virtually no information into the public domain detailing how many claims have been processed. This is despite a request from Ed Miliband, now almost two months ago, for information to be placed in the House of Commons Library.

With the Policing Minister, Nick Herbert, conspicuous in his absence, it fell to Lynne Featherstone to defend the Home Office disappointing record in supporting the riot victims. Numbers were thrown around, and yet more promises were made, though still the Government has refused to take responsibility. Supporting victims and helping them recover from the havoc wreaked by the riots should be a matter of moral obligation, not one of political debate. The government has to be held to account for its failure to fulfill this most basic of obligations.

David Lammy is the MP for Tottenham and author of ‘Out Of The Ashes: Britain After The Riots’