Is Lewisham Council In Trouble?

Some months ago I wrote a post giving my opinion of former Lewisham Mayor (and now MP for Bristol North East) Damien Egan’s, record in office.  I made a number of points about what had happened, or rather not happened on his watch, both as Mayor between 2018-2024 and as Cabinet Member for Housing in the 4 years before that, in the area of housing.  Essentially these highlighted a failure to build new homes, particularly on longstanding designated redevelopment sites, and the inadequacy of the Repair Service of the Council’s now in-house Council House manager, Lewisham Homes.  Recent events have provided a postscript to my blog-post about these failings.

In July it was reported to Lewisham’s Mayor & Cabinet that Lewisham had failed to build the number of homes it was required by the Government to build and had consequently failed what is known as its Housing Test.  It built 2,111 homes fewer than it should.  It achieved on 51% of its target.  It was the second worst performer out of all 32 London Boroughs, having just been able to avoid last place by beating Redbridge who managed to build only 50% of its target.  Lewisham was the 21^st worst performing local authority in the country.  One of the consequences of failing its Housing Test by so much is that it is now subject to a presumption in favour of sustainable development.  I am not a lawyer but it seems that, in short, because Lewisham has built far too few homes, it will essentially have to grant permission to developers that apply with schemes that meet the sustainability criteria.  The Council, as the Planning Authority, will have little if any discretion to exercise when determining these applications and little power to influence them.  Arguably it has lost its planning powers and is now merely a rubber stamp.

Last year, the Council referred itself to the Housing Ombudsman for the poor quality of its housing stock and concerns it had about the adequacy of its Repairs Service and its fire safety measures.  A month before, it had entered itself into the Affordable Housing Awards where it won an award for being Contractor of the year for the quality of this service.

About a week ago the BBC reported that:

‘Lewisham Council is to be investigated by the Housing Ombudsman over "repeated failings" within its housing services.

The ombudsman, which deals with complaints about social housing providers, said it had found failings in 85% of housing complaints about the south-east London authority in the last 12 months. 

It said failings were found in 90% of cases related to leaks, damp and mould, and there were 16 "serious failings" in how the borough council dealt with housing issues in the past year.’

It seems reasonable to assume that this situation would have been alleviated if the Council had built more homes.  The proposed Achilles Street development is a case in point.  It involved the demolition and rebuilding of two Council Housing Estates in New Cross, the ward I used to represent.  While the scheme was being touted as early as 2016, to date, nothing has happened on the site.  I could go on.

In my previous post, I mentioned Education, but only in the context of Academisation.  What I did not say was that despite claims that 90 odd % of Lewisham Schools are either Good or Outstanding as judged by Ofsted, Lewisham has the worst to second to worst performing secondary schools in London.  One of these, Conisborough College, recently essentially failed its Ofsted inspection and was then subject to an Academy Order issued by the Regional Schools Commissioner.  This situation does not get a public mention from the Council, and if there is a political commitment to improve our secondary schools and a delivery plan to go with it, I am unaware of it.

Whilst the previous Mayor made little or no progress in these areas as well as in others, as I outlined in my post, during his six years in office, the point I really want to make here is that there have been serious deficiencies at the Council for many decades.

Lewisham Secondary Schools have been poor performers for many years.  We have Ofsted to thank for making this and their underperformance relative to other London schools transparent.  This situation even predates my time on the Council.  When I was first elected to the Council in 1998 the then Leader, Dave Sullivan, established an Education Select Committee (I think that this was its title) to investigate the poor performance of our secondary schools.  At the time three of our secondaries were in Ofsted Special Measures.  The Committee comprised mainly Councillors, of which I was one, and a number of independent people.  It took evidence from witnesses and came up with recommendations for improvement.  Various initiatives have been tried since then.  Our secondary schools have improved dramatically since this time.  However, the schools in neighbouring boroughs have improved as well, leaving Lewisham still with the worst or second worst secondary offer in London, depending on what year you look at. I get the impression that since 2018, the Council has decided, in effect, to accept the situation and move on.  If there is evidence to the contrary, as I say, I am yet to see it.

When it comes to Council Housing, be it when it was managed in-house by the Housing Directorate or subsequently by the Lewisham Homes, an Arm’s Length Management Organisation (ALMO) which was always effectively under the control of the Council, the performance of the Repairs Service has always been questionable.  You did not have to be a Councillor for very long before you encountered the fruits of its labours via tenants’ visits to your surgeries or home visits you went on.  The experience was a litany of no repairs for weeks and months, ignored requests for repairs from tenants, missed visits, poor quality repairs when they were done and poor management of sub-contractors, some of them very large companies, when to say that they lacked a public service ethos and commitment to customer service would be something of an understatement. In short, the service has been failing for decades.

In 2006 the then Home Secretary, John, now Lord, Reid famously described the Home Office as ‘not fit for purpose’.  The phrase caught on and has been used regularly since then to describe many different things.  Consequently, it has lost some of its force so I will not use it.  However, I think that it is well understood amongst the cognoscenti, Officers and Members, within the Council, that the phone system, the IT system and the Financial Control Systems just do not work and haven’t done so for many decades.  This is a very big issue and I will not go into it in depth now.

My conclusion, based on having spent twenty-four years as a Councillor trying to improve its performance for the benefit of its residents, many of those in senior roles, together with other committed and hardworking Councillors, is that the Council is in deep trouble.  It is broken.  Its basic functionality is fundamentally impaired.  Sadly, it is taking outside bodies whose judgments can not be dismissed as wrong or the product of vexatious personally motivated vendettas – the Government regarding the Housing Test, The Information Commissioner, The Housing Ombudsman, Ofsted – to bring this to public notice.  Nor can all this be blamed on Tory Cuts, although without a doubt this has exacerbated the situation and made improvement very difficult.  The failures are deep-seated and predate the 2010 Osborne Austerity regime.  Turning things around is going to prove extremely difficult in my view.  A necessary first step is going to be an admission of the nature and scale of the problems that the Council faces. Apologies alone will not suffice.  The Council will need to demonstrate credibility in the eyes of the public and independent outside bodies so as to generate confidence that it is up to the task.

Mayor Dacres was my Co-Councillor in New Cross for 8 years.  I know many Councillors, including some Cabinet Members, very well.  Many are my friends.  I wish them all the very best at this very challenging time.

Salus Populi Suprema Lex.