COMMENT: Another Week - Another Housing Scandal!

11.18.00am UTC (GMT +0000) Fri 15th Aug 2008

Just when you thought nothing could get worse than the spiralling losses from renting out empty properties to private landlords - £14 million currently and rising - the South London Press carries a story from a whistle-blowing former officer in London's Dodgiest Council.

The source claimed that there was a culture of "incompetence and mismanagement" - well we rather knew that already. And the same source revealed that council spending on this bogus accommodation for homeless families was "out of control." Not really surprising either given the enormous amounts at stake.

The source went on to say "I couldn't believe the number of void properties. The department was in chaos." That chimes with my own observations - and probably yours too. Apparently, the same source reveals, Lambeth Housing was unaware of 80 properties on its books.

More worrying, the former Lambeth officer says "There were no checks on repair work carried out by private contractors. The attitude seemed to be, "It's not our money, it's taxpayer's, let's just spend it. At the same time homes that needed something simple like a door handle changing would be void for months until the repair was carried out."

Again this only serves to confirm earlier exposes on the subject.

Sadly although Lambeth says it has now carried out an internal investigation into the Empty Homes Scandal it still refuses to make the findings public or allow any kind of scrutiny committee until the autumn - presumably after the Audit Commission Inspectors are safely off the premises?

Even more worrying was the former officer's revelation that middle managers "manipulated spreadsheets to cover their backs" rather than sort out the mess.

This is very worrying and goes to the heart of Labour's desperate obsession with Star Ratings rather than providing improved services to the people that elected them. Eager to please their political masters in Whitehall a climate of fear is produced so that no officer feels able to tell it like it really is.

What possible faith can anyone have now that any statistics from this Council claiming improvement haven't been similarly and cynically manipulated - or falsified in common parlance?