Every council estate has its characters and veteran Southwark Housing Officer Charmain Bynoe has met them all. Her new book ‘The Estate’ offers readers a peak behind the curtain, an eavesdrop on the stairwell, and an unapologetic insight into council estate life.
“He wouldn’t go into the bathroom and he would hoard his urine and number twos. There were bottles of urine on the window sill. But it did look pretty when the sun shone through – you have to see the positives in everything.”
Charmain Bynoe, 60, the star of Channel 4’s critically acclaimed ‘Council House Britain’, is the Resident Services Officer for Peckham’s Acorn and Oliver Goldsmith Estates. She is the first port-of-call, shoulder to cry on and troubleshooter for roughly 700 tenancies and 3,500 people.
A council worker for 23 years, she says she wrote the book to show what her job really involves: “People say ‘oh you evict people’ but that’s not what it’s about … we’ve had complaints made against us and people shouting us telling us we don’t know to do our jobs but we understand it’s through their frustration.”
‘The Estate’, published by Simon & Schuster and ghost-written by Elizabeth Sheppard, recounts the unbelievable stories from her career – from the harrowing to the heartwarming.
In one chapter, she details how pimps moved into an estate and used the bin lockers as pop-up brothels. “When the estate’s workers start early in the morning the evidence is everywhere. There are condom wrappers all over the floor and sticky streaks up the walls where they’ve been chucked away.”
Another chapter recounts how she visits the home of married couple, Pleasant and Samuel (not their real names), and doesn’t have cause for concern. “The second time I meet Pleasant, Samuel is under arrest. He has battered her so severely that her eyeball has been dislodged from its socket”, she writes.
Asked how she copes with the emotional stress, Charmain said: “When I first started I would get very emotional about things I saw. When you’re the point of call to solve that problem for people it can eat away at you mentally. I know we’re not doctors but you do have to get the point where you cut yourself out. Don’t take on the emotional baggage of it because then you can’t help someone. It does grate on you – certain things you see, certain things you hear…”
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A recent report by the Institute for Government think tank found that cuts to neighbourhood services since 2010 have left English councils “hollowed out”. Charmain says she feels the dwindling resources. “There is no money! It’s not that we want people to live in mould and damp. The resources aren’t there because of government cuts. Every single borough is going through the same thing.”
