Footballer Jack Leslie commemorated as Newham Mayor marks another milestone in the delivery of new homes priority programme

The Mayor of Newham, Rokhsana Fiaz, said that she continues to make real progress in delivering her top priority of more affordable homes for local families when she attended the topping out of a new block of 15 council flats in Canning Town named after local footballer Jack Leslie (1901-88).

“I’m committed to making sure Newham Council does all that it can to provide local people with the homes they deserve and can afford. Since 2018 a massive agenda has been addressing, in a substantive way, the crisis in housing facing too many of our people. We are doing whatever it takes and whatever we can to tackle this head on.

That is why the Council is building more than 1,000 affordable homes and remains on schedule to start all these by May 2022, before my current term of office ends.

“As Mayor, my mission is to champion people’s needs and I have made it my top priority to make sure that Newham Council does all that it can to provide local people with the homes they deserve. I’m really proud that here at Jack Leslie Point we are at a landmark stage in the construction, just one year after starting, and that it will be finished this November.”

Mayor Fiaz has set a target of 1,000 starts by May 2022 and set up the Affordable Homes for Newham programme to harness the building of thousands of high quality, energy efficient homes for the people who need them most.

The site of Jack Leslie Point was previously occupied by under used garages. The homes are being built to ambitious sustainability standards. The development will be car free, in accordance with council policy, but there will be disabled parking spaces.

At the event Mayor Fiaz met six members of Jack Leslie’s family, including three of his granddaughters. Jack Leslie was born Gerald Road in Canning Town, where there is now a blue plaque. He played for Barking Town and then Plymouth Argyle, ending his career in team support at West Ham.

Mayor Fiaz said: “I’m proud and privileged to be here with members of Jack’s family as woman of colour who been trying to do some pioneering things by being disruptive. I hope we have done as best as we can in Jack’s memory and that he will forever be immortalised in this building of exceptional design and quality. Being held back because of the colour of your skin or because you’re a woman or because we may not be as able as what society says to us is normal is what my administration has been fighting against.”