Lambeth still poor

Lambeth Town Hall - run by a Lib Dem / Tory alliance

Lambeth Council is still delivering poor quality services to its residents and is unlikely to improve, according to government watchdog the Audit Commission. Its league table of all local authorities in England and Wales, released in December, ranks Lambeth amongst the 10 worst councils in the country, with only "uncertain prospects for improvement" - the same position as in December 2002.

The disappointing news comes after a year of new initiatives and a much-publicised "recovery plan" that council bosses claimed would lift the troubled borough out of the "poor" category where it currently languishes. But the Audit Commission report, which is based on performance indicators for council services and government monitoring of managers, is a damning indictment on the failure of those attempts at improvement.

Worse still, the very low score for Lambeth's "capacity to improve" reaffirms the government's dim view of the senior managers and Executive councillors who lead the organisation. The council was first judged to have little chance of improvement last December, in the first year of the current Conservative - Liberal Democrat coalition's time in power, during which they lost 40% of the council's best managers. The government's repeated criticism of the council's lack of leadership deals a severe a body blow to the Tory-Liberal pact.

Labour Group Leader Steve Reed said, "Lambeth is stagnating. The government warned the council's leaders last Christmas that they had to get better, but in the last year they've achieved precisely nothing. Lambeth council is still poor, and there is little grounds for hope that it will get any better while this lot are in charge. They just don't know what they're doing."

Labour councillors were amazed at the council's attempts to limit the damage done by the damning report by simply claiming that, in fact, Lambeth is improving. The council's web site said "It’s official Lambeth services are getting back on track", and highlighted small structural changes which, although commended by the Audit Commission, are so minor that they have done nothing to improve services or to change the council's overall rating.

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