Cllr Simpson

After the Tories had promisied to deliver a £45 million investment to improve homes of council tenants starting last April, the figure has now been cut back to £10-£15 million.

The Labour Group has said it will be asking further questions about the full costs of the investment scheme and the full risks to the council that have both yet to be quantified.
 
Cllr Christine Simpson, Labour Lead Cllr for Housing, said:
“This report at last answers questions on the fundamentals of this scheme that I have been asking for a long while and have either been evaded or misleading replies given. All along we have been told that the aim of this project in achieving large scale investment into our tenants homes was fine and on track.  It very clearly is not.”
 
Councillor Gill Mitchell, Leader of the Labour Group, said,
“We have gone along with this in good faith but it would seem that from the outset the council has not been clear about its proposals and not been getting the best advice, despite tax-payers paying heavily for it.   We were told that the investment in housing was a standard scheme used by other councils but this has proved to be clearly not the case as revision after revision and valuable time lost.

“My warnings about raising false expectations of the council’s tenants have unfortunately come true as the projected capital income dwindles from £45 to £10 million and the scheme to invest in the City’s council housing looks less and less possible.”
 
A spokesman for Labour said:
"The Cabinet report seeks to blame national changes to the Housing Benefit system as being responsible for undermining the scheme; however, these changes have been known about for well over a year and should have been taken into account much earlier.
 
"Despite continual attempts from the Leader of the Council to pin the blame on the government it is very clear from communications with the Department of Communities and Local Government included in the report, that the government officials have simply not been receiving the detailed information, evidence and assurances they have continually been seeking."

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