The report is now actually available to download here. I think you can also get it via the link to NCC's response. Must have come up while I was having a nap this afternoon.
Not read it yet.
Thursday, 15 January 2009
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Thanks for the link to the Audit Commission Report...did you know that their Chairman (not listed on their website) is:
....Since October 2006 their chairman has been Michael O'Higgins, who had for 10 years previously been managing partner of PA Consulting.
Remember them?
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/newstopics/politics/lawandorder/2776191/Prisoner-data-blunder-firm-PA-Consulting-loses-multi-million-Government-contract.html
Now on to the strategic implications of this audit....
mmmm council housing....weren't there 43,500 propeties with severe problems by 2001?
I think that you need to look at how divided Nottingham became in the eighties: how when the wholseale packaging of rented tenants into agency and shortime working and benefits for which they could be targetted for debt in court (bankruptcy for non payment of council tax or unpaid rent because of sloooowwwed down or part payments of unemployment benefits or council tax benefits), made them what we now so easily term:
THE UNDERCLASS......
... Add sub prime marketing to the mix and then consider how the anarchy in the Housing Service might easily became a silo strategy...simply because the service knew that noone was keeping watch on the real national value of these assets...
No Ruth Watson working with Channel 4 to go into these estates and prove to their tenants that these properties are worth saving...
... think about how the wider council service became acculturated to being embarrassed and shamed by council housing, shamed by the housing benefit and council tax benefit bills... in the big drive to attract Capital One and big business investment, that there were people who didn't have the capacity to be part of the Brave New World...
To understand the environment think about this situation in terms of how afraid older housing professionals who'd bought into Thatcherism politically but yet had all the expertise in allocating council housing in the old but questionable ways...
Did they all watch what was happening at Nottingham City Homes all the way through, did the senior management at Nottingham City Homes know they were being watched...did they know that their time was numbered?
It's the old cat and mouse that we talk about....
Think about how the 'all white council housing estates' were created...that most black and ethnic minority citizens in Nottingham in the 50s, 60's and 70's had to band together to get (expensive) mortgages because there was absolutely no chance that they'd have a chance to get council housing...
And although labour weren't going to do anything that would undermine the influence of the market when they came to power in 97, they did try to go into the inner cities with the New Deal.
But the (mainly mature men), who used to have control of housing, now had jobs and positions (but in quangoes because of the contracted out culture), still felt ambivalent about giving up the ideals of what service should be and saw the New Deal democracy and the encroachement of minorities on their ground as sacriligious.
Think about how they sought to position themselves to ensure that Labour's changes would have no effect.
I think that in Nottingham it's the two issues of the massive neglect of housing and the strategic maladminstration of New Deal that's the real issue here.
Think about what has happened to Nottingham's Council housing in terms of a real war against democracy and fairness by a group of people who, on principle, do not want a meritocracy to succeed...
Think about New Deal. This was the inner city ground that could nurture inclusiveness and real opportunity in Nottingham. Not just giving more to the already haves....the Nottingham Post, Capital One etc....
Think about its economic impact without real support by the council to promote the importance of council and social housing.
Consider how all the key appointments in the New Deal structures were not really integrated into the appointment process you would expect in democratic organisations...think about how all the key supplier and contractor appointments bled those projects dry....and then the 'Chief Exectives' of these organisations were humoured until they could be rumoured and some maladminstration or biographical misdemeanour could result in their disgrace and removal...
The Nottingham City Homes 'scandal' doesn't really go far enough into the real reasons why Nottingham needs democracy really badly...
There are definitely two Nottinghams because of the ideological need to pretend council housing is inferior and unimportant.
During the last twenty years, all the hard working council employees began to believe that they all could and should make a million.... either in part-time businesses that they ran from their council posts or at the casino at night....
Renting and council housing, service and just a straightforward, non acquisitive way of life was, well...such a 'chavvy' no no...
Forgotten Nottingham ...
16 January 2009 22:35
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