Wandsworth Guardian covers wardens story

I am delighted to see the Wandsworth Guardian reporting on this story in today's edition.

What annoys me about the way Wandsworth Conservatives behave is their attitude that they know best and everyone else is wrong.

It's this appalling arrogance that has led to this unpopular reorganisation of the sheltered housing scheme. There is no reason why they could not have consulted properly - as they're supposed (and I would argue required) to do.

As Arabella Drive resident Rita Maxwell highlights in the Guardian article there is no reason to adequately explain the way they buried two petitions opposing their plans - why hasn't the council sent these petitions to its housing committee as it should have?

And there is no reason why, once residents' concerns were known, that they could not have agreed to my request to suspend the plans while they investigated the widespread concern that had been generated.

I suspect they think that admitting errors makes them look weak; answering to local residents a distraction; and agreeing to a request from someone from a different political party hands me some sort of victory.

What a sad way to approach really important concerns that have caused terrible distress among senior citizens in our sheltered housing. And what a dreadful indictment of the arrogance of Conservatives in Putney.

The Tories must suspend their warden reorganisation

During the week since I first exposed the Tory plans to shift around Putney & Roehampton's sheltered housing wardens, I've been unearthing more and more troubling issues about the manner in which this reorganisation has been managed.

Aside from causing huge upset among many of the senior citizens who could be about to lose their cherished warden, the Conservatives have behaved extraordinarily in both a failure to consult and in trying to keep these plans out of the public, democractic spotlight.

Way back in October last year, residents of the Lennox estate sheltered housing scheme in Roehampton sent a petition into the Tory cabinet member for Housing, Councillor Martin Johnson.

Normally when petitions are sent to the council they are reported to the appropriate scrutiny committee and council officers then have to explain, in public, how they think the concerns raised should be tackled.

In this case, Cllr Johnson wrote to one of petitioners saying that he was taking the "unusual step" of sending it straight to the Director of Housing, thus avoiding the democratic scrutiny afforded all other petitions. As a result the residents of the Lennox - some four months on - have still not had an adequate response to the concerns raised in their petition.

The residents of another Roehampton sheltered housing scheme, Minstead Gardens, submitted a similar petition at the start of this year. This too has never seen the light of day; nor has it received an adequate response either.

This is bad enough but at least it might be excusable had the Conservative reorganisation plans themselves been approved by councillors. But this entire plan was never put before any public council committee either: there has been no open accountable scrutiny of these plans.

And even that lack of accountability might be tolerated had those affected by the changes - the elderly residents of the sheltered housing schemes themselves, been given a say. After all, the reorganisation was first mooted back in August 2008: six months ago. That means there has been plenty of time when the council could have talked through their ideas with residents and so avoided a lot of the anxiety and fear that has been created by their secrecy.

The Council talks about this reorganisation being an example of "best practice". But failing to ask residents about what is an essential service for them could never be best practice. Burying petitions is not best practice. And keeping even elected councillors in the dark about a policy that has significant consequences for their constituents is not best practice.

A US Supreme Court Justice once said that "sunlight is the best disinfectant". I pledge to shine as much light on these Conservative plans until they do the right thing by our senior citizens.

I've called on the council to suspend the reorganisation until proper consultation and democratic scrutiny has been carried out. It is the very least they can do to correct this botched plan.

Sheltered housing stupidity

Over the past week, I've been working with sheltered housing residents in Roehampton over crazy plans by the Conservatives to play musical chairs with the wardens who look after the schemes and their residents.

Sheltered housing offers independent living for senior citizens, but with the support of a "warden", someone employed to check on residents, to make sure they're ok and to offer help and support when asked.

The best wardens build great trust and friendship with the residents and become much loved - in fact the strong personal connection is the whole point of such schemes.

The Conservatives are now planning on destroying this link - and with it the trust and security that goes with it - by forcibly rotating wardens around all the borough's sheltered schemes every two years. Worse still, they've done this without consultation with residents and without any council overview and scrutiny. This is not just bad practice and gross arrogance - it has caused real trauma among residents.

The bizarre logic behind this upsetting plan is that senior sheltered housing officers are apparently overworked. How rotating wardens will ease workload is something understood only by the Tories. Wouldn't the rest of us take the view that if a service is overstretched then either workload needs to be reduced or more wardens need to be employed?

There seems to be some belated admission from the Conservatives that they may have failed to consult properly, but that has not prompted them to halt their plans - which come in on 02 March. This is not good enough and I'm doing all I can to help our senior citizens - who deserve so much better - from losing their wardens.

Council block kept empty for years

With the weekend's reports about councils giving tenants £25,000 to move out of their homes; and the BBC's revelations that London Mayor Boris Johnson is going to miss his - incredibly modest - target for new affordable homes; you'd think that we'd have exhausted our stock of existing homes wouldn't you?

Welcome to 31-55 Nursery Close, just behind Ravenna Road in the heart of Putney.

31-55 Nursery Close was custom-made sheltered housing for older people built in the late 1970s. For the last two years and then some, it has been empty - decanted of residents because of plans agreed in 2007 to turn its bedsit accommodation into stand-alone flats.

I've found out from the council that work is due to commence on 16 February to convert the blocks into self-contained units rather than bedsits for the elderly: and that's a good thing. But this work will take a year to complete, so by the time its new residents finally start moving in in 2010, it will have been empty for over three years.

The council could have given its former residents one or two further years of undisrupted stay, instead of moving them out prematurely. It could have been used as temporary accommodation for a few of the thousands on the council's housing waiting list. It could even have been used as a rough sleepers shelter during this exceptionally bitter spell of recent weather. And throughout, it could have been generating rent for the council.

Instead its been left empty. How many other properties are the Conservatives keeping empty?