A £70,000 programme of improvements is reportedly being planned for the £1.7 million west London council home associated with jailed extremist preacher Abu Hamza, with the cost falling on taxpayers.
The five-bedroom Edwardian property in Shepherd’s Bush is due to receive new windows and doors, solar panels and loft insulation. Planning permission has been submitted, although it has not yet been approved.
The work is expected to be completed before the end of the decade and is being carried out while Hamza, 68, remains imprisoned for life at the maximum-security ADX Florence facility in Colorado.
His wife, Najat Chaffe, 67, is the only person registered as living at the address. She has occupied the property since 1995, after claiming that she and Hamza had separated.
A longstanding tenancy arrangement gives her the right to remain there, while Hammersmith and Fulham Council is responsible for maintaining the home.
The property is understood to be in a conservation area and has risen significantly in value over the years. It is among about 1,000 council homes due to benefit from the improvement programme.
The council has said it is legally required to maintain its housing stock and carry out improvement works, regardless of the individual properties involved.
But the spending has drawn criticism from Jose Afonso, the council’s Conservative opposition leader.
“This is a disgusting waste of public money,” he told the Sun. “Residents will be appalled to know that not only are we housing the families of terrorists, we are doing so in five-bedroom houses and paying for extensive upgrades.”
Previous dispute over Abu Hamza’s family home
The house has previously been at the centre of a dispute over its size and the terms of Mrs Chaffe’s tenancy.
In 2012, the council asked her to move to a smaller property, arguing that the five-bedroom home was too large for the number of people living there. Officials said more than 10,000 people were then on the borough’s housing waiting list and that the property should go to a family in greater need.
However, Mrs Chaffe was entitled to refuse the offer under the terms of her existing tenancy. She went on to raise the couple’s eight children at the Shepherd’s Bush address.
Although Hamza never officially lived at the property, neighbours and local reports said he was regularly seen there before his arrest in 2004.
The former Finsbury Park Mosque preacher was jailed in Britain in 2006 for soliciting murder and inciting racial hatred. He was extradited to the United States in 2012 after a lengthy legal battle.
In 2014, he was convicted in New York over his role in a plot to kidnap 16 tourists in Yemen in 1998, in which four hostages died, and over a conspiracy to establish a terrorist training camp in Oregon. He was sentenced to life imprisonment the following year.
Hamza has previously sought compassionate release, with his legal team raising concerns about his prison conditions and medical treatment. His lawyers claimed he was held in a room lacking sufficient natural light and a proper toilet for his disabilities, and said he had suffered serious health problems.
