Michael Gove has written to Southwark Council slamming its treatment of council tenants. We don’t deny that the council must improve, but the housing secretary’s hypocrisy is unforgivable.
In his letter to the Council CEO Althea Loderick, Gove said he was “appalled” by four different cases where the Housing Ombudsman found Southwark guilty of maladministration. The cases are certainly shocking; a pregnant woman left in the cold for six months, a tenant wrongly accused of criminality.
Michael Gove ‘appalled’ by Southwark Council’s poor response to housing complaints
But let’s consider who wrote this letter, or at least ordered somebody else to write it. Michael Gove is one of the architects of austerity and has presided over some of the most devastating cuts to public services, including local government funding, in modern political memory.
However, what really wrangles isn’t the fact that Gove has highlighted housing issues, but the manner in which he’s done it. In his letter, he offers zero solutions and completely fails to acknowledge how his government’s policies have fuelled the crisis.
What’s even more astonishing is that the letter follows almost exactly the same formula as one sent to Lambeth Council in August. Some of the phraseology, like that about “taking a personal interest” is distinctly similar.
A quick look on the government’s website shows he sent at least seven of these letters to local councils in August alone and we know that number is now more.
From the looks of it, Gove and his team are so bereft of ideas for fixing the housing crisis, that they’ve literally resorted to spamming council CEOs. One can picture a bleary-eyed parliamentary assistant lifting his head from a keyboard; “which cash-strapped public authority shall we attack now, boss?”
Don’t be fooled, these letters are political manoeuvres and little more. Of the eight authorities the News knows to have received letters, six are Labour-run, one is under no overall control, and another is run by independents. Not a single Tory-run council has been targeted.
Gove knows full well that the biggest social landlords, and those struggling with threadbare housing budgets, are likely to be Labour-run. With a London mayoral election next year, and a general election on the horizon, the letters are cynical acts of political posturing.
Southwark Council desperately needs to improve its processes, to ensure the most vulnerable residents aren’t left to suffer in grim living conditions. Meanwhile, Gove would do well to snap out of his wilful amnesia, and recognise his party’s cuts to local government are a big part of the problem.
The tenants are the one’s being failed here and they need solutions from both the government and the council.