Leaked official report shows how Labour wrecked housing service
The leaked Audit Commission report into Lambeth Living shows how the housing service in the borough has collapsed since the Labour Party regained political control of the council in mid 2006. Despite changing the Labour politician in charge of housing recently the decline has continued and now the housing director is packing his bags to move to a new job in Merton.
Councillor John Whelan, Conservative Group Leader, says: “The report finds that the overall service is now weak but by contrast it adds several times that in 2006 Lambeth Housing (as Lambeth Living was then known) was performing adequately and demonstrating improvement.
“The biggest risk now is that it will take too long for the service to recover in time to reach the standard necessary to qualify for £250 million from the Government to meet the decent home standard by 2014.”
CLICK HERE if you would like to download key extracts from the new report.
Why not link to the whole report and give us a bit of context?
Or would that undermine your blogpost?
Luke – We will link to the whole report as soon as possible and agree that everyone should be able to read the full report for themselves. Unfortunately the Council is refusing to publish the document, despite many hard copies now being in circulation across the borough. To make it available online we have to scan all 100 pages ourselves and this takes a little time.
Do not be fooled by the so-called “leaking” of this draft report.
The Audit Commission is a well run and secure organisation and does not “leak” drafts of its reports, and, although Lambeth Council leaks like a straw bucket, only a handful of Members and officers would have had access to this draft and none of these would have anything to gain from making public such severe and comprehensive criticism of Lambeth Living in every area of its operation. Because of its limited circulation, discovery of the source of the leak would not be difficult, and the person responsible would surely face instant dismissal and would have little prospect of future employment in local government. Furthermore, the Audit Commission is not notable for producing hard-hitting, critical reports on the activities of high profile local authorities pursuing policies favoured by the government in power.
Also, Audit Commission assessment is not gauged against fixed benchmarks but on “potential for improvement”. All this suggests to me that this damning draft has been released so that when the Commission next inspects it will be able to report such dramatic improvements that it can be awarded a second star, allowing it to draw down funding under the ALMO scheme.
Luke is wide of the mark here. Council tenants KNOW that the housing services has collapsed, yet rents have rocketed.
The council is currently a shambles.
And Luke, speaking of context, why didn’t you mention that you work as bag carrier to a Labour MP?