EDITORIAL: Council Leader admits Labour Housing Failure (Lambeth Liberal Democrats)

Lambeth Liberal Democrats <office@lambethlibdems.org.uk>

EDITORIAL: Council Leader admits Labour Housing Failure

October 28, 2008 1:02 PM

In a rare moment of honesty, Labour Leader and the man in charge of Lambeth Council since 2006 said this, " Housing Management in Lambeth has not been good enough for nearly two decades. Ask any resident and that's what they'll tell you." How true - and what a sad admission that is.

Council tenants have a right to a decent housing service and now even the Council Leader admits that twenty years of Labour rule has utterly failed them.

Of course, the Labour Leader's me-a-cul-pa only extended to those two lines before he descended into his usual pattern of blaming everyone else. Labour leaders are not very good at saying sorry, we got it wrong. And they avoid taking responsibility like the plague - just responsibility allowances - so don't expect anyone to do the honourable thing and resign.

Yet the current turmoil in Housing is a reflection of failure if it is anything at all.

First of all there was a failure to be honest with the electorate that Labour was planning to privatise the housing management service after the 2006 local council elections.

Then there was the failure to win the argument about the ALMO through the ballot box - so they just ignored the result and went ahead anyway.

This was followed by a failure to be frank about what, if anything, the ALMO might achieve and when.

One thing Labour did promise at the election, though, was more housing offices to make life easier for tenants. Yet they closed offices as soon as they were in power, and now they intend to leave just three open for the entire borough. That sounds suspiciously like a failure to us.

Having promised more caretakers, more concierge systems and more repairs - and charging tenants mightily for these services - they're now busy slashing them all again. And much-needed repairs are on hold. So that's another crushing Labour failure.

The latest Labour failure has been to preside over one of the biggest housing finance scandals of recent years - some £14 million is being talked about. Now we see the prospect of deficit budgets being set and rents to go sky high. The scandal seems to have holed the good ship ALMO below the water line - maybe fatally.

Yet it is Lambeth tenants that are expected to pick up the tab and all the untold misery for this abject Labour failure. Labour's expected rent rise in April will cause real hardship to real people who have already been hit by Labour's heating charges, Labour's electricity charges, and all the other charges.

So the Council Leader is right. Housing Management under Labour has not been good enough for nearly two decades. It still isn't. And over the last twelve months it has just got a whole lot worse.

Ask any tenant.