Lambeth Living is Tops for Temps

4.11.40pm BST (GMT +0100) Fri 23rd Jul 2010

If you are a Lambeth Council tenant waiting for a minor, or even essential repair, you might just stand a better chance of getting disaster relief from the United Nations because little will have come your way this twelve months past.

Perhaps the news that Lambeth's Council Leader was finally going to act tough with the disastrous ALMO Lambeth Living that was largely his own creation offered you just a crumb of hope that things might improve?

But no. Labour indeed talked tough and threatened to take away £1 million from Lambeth Living until they realised that the whole shaky edifice would crash rather sooner rather than later. So the £1 million sticking plaster was quickly reapplied to stem the life-blood from ebbing away from the corpse.

Meanwhile we were told that a brand new Lambeth Living model was to be hurriedly announced in July and a whole series of glossy events was even programmed to show that there was real life left in Lambeth Living. Then the plug got pulled at the last moment and the events were reined back to September.

Meanwhile a report to Lambeth Leaseholders' Council has just revealed that during this period of severe national restraint, Lambeth Living has splurged out on 46 temporary staff, 21 of which cover posts that may not actually exist after the September restructuring exercise.

A spokeswoman opined, " Our restructure will be geared towards ensuring that tenants and leaseholders benefit from an improved and more efficient service. Until these changes are in place, it would not be cost effective to hire permanent staff for roles that may not exist in the new structure."

So that's all right then. At least all those expensive temporary staff may be able to afford to buy their own new kitchens and bathrooms that were once promised to tenants by Labour as part of the great ALMO con……