• NO matter the endless photographs and stories in the Tribune of our grinning politicians doing something wonderful, no matter the stream of Twitter babble from the same lot peddling their pride in being proud of that same something, there are times when the ridiculous fantasy of local authority services rubs up against that merciless critic – reality.

Such a time was Tuesday night in committee room four at the Town Hall when the housing scrutiny committee was in session. In the dock was Partners, a very special purpose vehicle, given a £30m-plus annual bung for 30 years to manage 6,500 of the authority’s properties.

No need to go into much detail. Neither councillors nor housing officers understood the deal they signed up to in 2002. Both of these parties thought they were, to use the jargon, “de-risking” housing management. Not quite.

The authority and residents were actually superglued into the contract by the short and curlies, as the council found out when it sought legal opinion to extricate itself from the deal.

Against this background, Partners felt free on Tuesday to roll out a blizzard of supposedly meaningful performance indicators showing a record within two decimal points of 100 per cent. Well, in you go if you get to set and mark your own homework.

Councillors and residents laughed at this performance of the stats data. The pity and the tragedy, however, is that, though the residents and councillors might not have the access or the technical tools to challenge the nonsense, nor self-evidently do the council officers supposedly managing Partners.

Councillor Diarmaid Ward was at Tuesday’s meeting, although apparently preoccupied with his Snapchat pix and Twitter memes. The executive member for housing is going large at the moment on his plans for building new homes, courtesy in part of those nasty Tories cutting in half the council’s £800m debt in the housing revenue account.

Personally, I wouldn’t trust him or this authority to knock out a Wendy house.

MICHAEL READ
Milner Square, N1