12/08/2008

The scandal at Norwich City Council that highlights why they are not fit to extend their boundaries

Norwich City Council is the body that should ultimately take the blame for the ongoing review of Council Boundaries in Norfolk which has caused much anger, the spending by councils of hundreds of thousands of pounds in propaganda, court cases and surveys, and still we are waiting for an answer from the government, and all because Norwich City Council made a brazen attempt to extend their boundaries to take over and destroy other neighbouring authorities. Yet, as the Eastern Daily Press highlights today, Norwich City Council are not even fit to run their own services yet alone those of neighbouring boroughs.

The very fact that the politicians in charge of Norwich City Council seemed to know nothing of the fact that a senior housing officer closed down a sheltered housing scheme, only for her to then move in to the premises herself at a knock down rent shows us just how inept Norwich City Council is.

The actual incident itself, which has led to the subsequent suspension of the senior officer, is scandalous in itself. The fact that Norwich City Council attacked such a vulnerable group in the first place, removing them from their homes, was terrible. But for staff to take advantage of this is just appalling.

2 comments:

Anonymous said...

"The fact that Norwich City Council attacked such a vulnerable group in the first place, removing them from their homes, was terrible."

To be fair they hardly "attacked" them, they moved them out of sub-standard properties - probably part of the 'Decent Homes' agenda.

Anonymous said...

I very much doubt that they are substandard at all. The Government Decent Homes Standards gives six categories and a house has to fail three or more to be declared substandard and, albeit from a distance I doubt that they do fail, they have to be pretty bad to fail it. Some Council do invent a few more categories in order to fail them !

Of course it can be argued that the Norwich council charged rent for these properties and if they have been allowed to run down then the fault is with the council who should have repaired them as and when necessary. Is anybody going to be sacked for allowing this situation to develop ?

There are big problems with sheltered housing throughout the country at the moment and it is because of a twisted piece of Government thinking which moved them from out of general needs housing and redeposited them into Supporting People and they are now located in the budgets which deal with people with learning difficulties, the elderly and drug addicts .

The words that Norwich used are pretty much identical throughout the UK "They were difficult to let" and "They do not meet the aspirations of present day residents of Sheltered Housing"

The real meaning, however, is that the properties are going to cost a couple of hundred thousand to put right because we have not been repairing them for so long and they are standing on one million Pounds worth of land which we can flog to a developer to build affordable homes on . Thus, £200,000 saved, £1 million gained and who cares that we have to moved elderly people out to achieve this.

Incidentally perhaps somebody should inform Norwich council that Sheltered Housing is 'affordable housing' already so there is no point in knocking it down to build 'affordable housing' in its place'

And, in terms of being sub-standard, not so it seems for the employees of the Council who moved into them.

Vernon J Yarker
Chairman
The Sheltered Housing UK Association
www.shelteredhousinguk.com

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