I spent Tuesday night on the other side of the South Circular in Grove Park Ward.  I was there with the Housing Select Committee looking at the former council homes there.  Like residents in Lee Green, tenants in Grove Park decided they’d had enough of Lewisham Council as their landlord, and in this case voted to transfer their homes to L&Q – a not for profit housing association.

The whole committee was really impressed with the work that’s taking place at Grove Park.  You can see in the picture above the choice (and standard) of kitchen residents are entitled to under the decent homes work.  Residents are also getting new bathrooms.  We spoke to a few residents who were very impressed, and the surveys that have taken place have very high levels of satisfaction.

Of course, for Lewisham Homes tenants the picture is a lot bleaker.  7/10 properties managed by Lewisham Homes will fail the decent homes standard by next year.   That’s a disgrace, especially considering the basic naure of the standard.

Other points of note from the meeting:

• Housing benefit changes and applications doubled between February and March this year.  That suggests a lot of people are adjusting to changed circumstances as a result of the recession.  I wonder whether the service will be able to cope with such a huge increase in demand – but the cabinet member responsible assured me it will at the last council meeting.  I guess we’ll see.
• 38 people have approached the Council in mortgage difficulties. The council has been able to help 32 of these.  But not a single one has been helped by Gordon Brown’s mortgage rescue scheme.  That’s not surprising – Vince Cable has exposed that only 6 people in the whole country have benefitted from the scheme!