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COMMENT: Labour Shafts Lambeth Tenants
July 28, 2009 5:05 PM
Lambeth Labour Politicians should hang their heads in shame as the web of lies and deceit they have spun over the last three and a half years to Council tenants comes crashing down around their ears.
If it was not bad enough that their sheer incompetence has cost the Council, tenants and leaseholders dear in terms of precious wasted funds and wasted opportunities, now the whole situation has just turned a whole lot bleaker.
Reeling under unnecessary charges for services not provided, services in sharp decline, and sky-high rents tenants could perhaps hold out in the vain hope that Labour's promises of jam - or at least new kitchens and bathrooms - tomorrow might materialise.
That last hope that Labour had of convincing the electorate on estates up and down the borough that the ALMO would deliver like a rabbit out of a magician's hat any salvation for their calamitous housing policy has just been dealt a terminal blow - by its own Labour Government.
Only weeks ago the Audit Commission delivered a devastating critique of Lambeth Living's ability to haul social housing out of the mire and questioned whether the ALMO would be in a fit state to draw down the Government money required to reach the Decent Homes Standard by 2010. Indeed they questioned whether they would be in that happy situation much before 2012.
They then issued a stark warning that Lambeth could even find itself left out of the ALMO benefits club altogether if there was a change of Government in 2010.
They needn't have worried too much about the Conservatives, however, because Labour Housing Minister John Healey has just announced that the pot of money buried at the end of the ALMO Rainbow has now been taken away and put to good use in the front line for Gordon Brown's latest big and underfunded initiative to boost the affordable house building programme.
All of which leaves Lambeth Labour Leader and London's Housing Supremo, Cllr Steve Reed, with Ostrich-sized egg on his face. Not least because the same Labour Housing Minister has directed the vast majority of those precious funds to kick-start the languishing house-building programme to the Midlands and Northern Labour heartlands. Fewer than 3,000 homes will qualify in the Capital.
Make no mistake this is a devastating blow to thousands of hard working tenants and leaseholders in Lambeth. Labour's reckless gamble has been shown for the sham that it is - and this time Labour politicians cannot blame the Liberal Democrats, the phases of the moon or any other wacky idea to get them off the hook.
The tragedy is that this disaster has set back serious improvements in Lambeth's impoverished housing stock for a decade and with it the hopes and aspirations of those trapped in Labour's crumbling estates.