This week's Streatham Guardian features a story about the massive rent rises facing council tenants in Lambeth from April 2009.
Click here to read it
Today's South London Press features a similar story: Lambeth rent-hike is 'crushing blow'
With "Lambeth Living", the council's ALMO, already cutting services and making staff redundant, it's clear that tenants are going to be forced to pay more - for less.
Time after time council tenants have to pay for the mistakes made by senior managers who can't manage their budgets properly, while contractors rip off the council and the fat cats responsible for this mess get juicy bonuses.
Enough is enough! Tenants, working with the trade unions representing council staff, need to seize control of council housing and run it properly: for the benefit of Lambeth's 30,000 council tenants and leaseholders, not the greedy bosses.
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There is an urgent need for this appalling situation in Lambeth to be addressed. I remember shortly before the last Council elections in 2006 a huge scam was discovered in the Housing Dept where a contractor had ripped off the Council for millions on a central heating contract. This played a large part in the subsequent council election campaign but also contributed to a shortfall in budget.
This seems to have been allowed to continue with much smaller scale version of what is happening on the financial markets (a new scam announced over the weekend about a NASDAQ trader) and the taxpayer, or in this case the rent payer, being expected to foot the bill.
Lambeth spent a fortune on consultants for the ALMO. At one point, I stumbled across a conference being organised about this at the Vauxhall conference centre, where several hundred people attended an all day event. I was involved in organising a conference there for the London Ambulance Service Patients Forum and know that the place does not come cheap. This must have cost the Council a fortune and I am sure most came out of Housing Dept funds.
It is simply unacceptable and deeply disgusting that the poorest are expected to foot the bill for management failures in Lambeth. As Green Party parliamentary candidate for Vauxhall, I will give my support in any way possible to opposing this unacceptable increase for some of the poorest and most vulnerable people in Lambeth.
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