Labour's finance chief at Camden Council says we must cut services for young people such as the Fresh Gym in Highgate Newtown, we must cut services like the dementia centre in West Hampstead, we must cut grants to community centres like Holly Lodge. But then they waste money like there's no tomorrow.
For example, the pavements in York Rise/Chetwynd Rd have just been needlessly replaced. Worse - the paving stones are now above the height of residents' damp proof courses and the work may have to be done again. What a waste of money.
The Whittington Estate regeneration works, which were begun under Labour, led to a million pound out of court settlement by the council with contractors. Residents had warned that the specifications were too lax. The Labour Council failed to heed those. As residents predicted, the works could not be properly managed and works were done several times over. In the end architects and builders were sacked and new ones appointed. The council lost its legal battle against the original ones and wasted more money and more legal costs.
Highgate's Green Party councillor, Cllr Maya de Souza has been actively involved in pushing for better management of these regeneration works. Just think how many services and decent homes works could have been saved if the Whittington regeneration had been done properly.
Cllr de Souza also called for greater scrutiny of the North London Waste Authority's £7bn plan to use a controversial Private Finance Initiative (PFI) to fund new waste disposal facilities. Even the Treasury Select committee has slammed PFI projects for being wasteful.
The Greens want to ensure proper scrutiny of how this deal is to be financed and managed so that we are not tied into a contract that locks us into supplying huge quantities of waste with penalties if this is not done. We shouldn' be creating waste-hungry monsters and we can't afford to waste money in these difficult times.
That's Camden Labour for you - cutting services and wasting money at the same time.
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