CROYDON’S UNCARING COUNCIL (part 94): As first reported by Inside Croydon, our council has been roundly criticised by the Local Government Ombudsman over its callous treatment of the homeless. Now Dudley Mead, the councillor responsible for housing, has responded. While he’s busy turning homeless mothers and children out on to the streets before Christmas, Mead has managed to find time to bleat that the official criticism of Croydon Council is … no fair! Diddums!
Dudley Mead: criticism of Croydon Council’s illegal and callous mishandling of the homeless is “unfair”. Poor dear
Last month, the Ombudsman ordered Croydon to “review its policy and practice in relation to consideration of homeless applications” after a young woman and her children were left waiting for emergency accommodation 10 times longer than is required under the law, following an attack with a hammer and knives while in her previous council home. There’s more on this case here.
Mead, together with his wife Margaret – the Terry and June of Croydon politics – live in comfortable retirement, supplementing their old age pensions with more than £90,000 per year in councillors’ allowances.
It was Scrooge-like Mead who recently boasted in the Town Hall that the two young mothers and their small children, consigned by his council to Dickensian conditions in a “doubly illegal” council-funded B&B, were to be turned out on to the streets (and just before Christmas, too! Bah! Humbug!), for daring to criticise the squalor that the council had placed them in.
How has Mead responded to the Ombudsman’s latest critique of his shambolic mishandling of homeless people in Croydon? Does he man-up and take responsibility, as a good Conservative should? Or does he turn round and blame the victims of his and the council’s dreadful combination of callousness and incompetence?
Mead says that the latest Ombudsman’s report is a “dangerous precedent”. Yes, it might set the precedent of Croydon, and Mead, having to fulfill their legal responsibilities.
“I’m pretty angry about it, to put it mildly. We have a crisis going on and all the Ombudsman can do is criticise,” said Mead, the poor dear. Continue reading →
Like this:
Like Loading...
