EDITORIAL: Housing - More Questions than Answers

2.44.30pm UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 6th Oct 2008

Lambeth Housing is in turmoil. That much is obvious. Instead of getting to grips with the situation, Labour is boarding-up its Housing HQ in Hambrook House like so many empty properties around the borough while displaying a siege mentality lest any information leaks out to paint an even bleaker picture than is already apparent.

But Lambeth leaks money and information like a sieve and many tenants who know how it all works (or doesn't) a lot better than most Labour Cabinet members are not in the mood to be hoodwinked.

It is easy to blame housing officials - and they don't come out of this well - but calls for heads to rolls rather avoids the public's conclusion that political heads should be on the block as well.

Anyone with any first-hand knowledge knows that Lambeth Housing is crumbling faster than Britain's east coast but Labour perversely loaded the department with more and more responsibilities at a time when its managerial capacity wasn't capable of running a whelk stall.

Planning, regeneration, environment have all been ladled-in like so many disparate ingredients in a soup. And that's exactly what they've got themselves into.

Worse, Labour has let rip with the consultants to bridge the management gap with more than 200 in Housing at the last count (and rising), or 20% of the workforce, and costing a whopping £4.5 million in fees every year.

For what? Not for any improvements for beleaguered Council tenants, that's for sure.

Labour politicians have had their eyes firmly fixed on the ALMO (Arms Length Management Organisation) as a desperate wheeze to offload the problems associated with the maintenance and improvement of the borough's housing stock. Perhaps they were simply not up to the job?

They seem not to have realized that this option was both highly risky and expensive and that they would end-up with the ultimate responsibility but with very little day-to-day control. And within hours of going live, Lambeth Living appears to be on life-support and slashing services and staff in a desperate attempt just to stay solvent.

Labour seems to have no answers except to make people on low incomes pay for their mistakes.

A few political scalps will not enable tenants to pay their bills as they sink into greater and greater levels of personal debt but it might show that Labour fesses-up to its mistakes.