Council Assembly 2 - Asking questions

Cllr Richard Thomas.

At Council Assembly each councillor can submit one question to an Executive Member (or chair of a committee - see below).

This month I submitted this question to Executive Member for Regeneration, Cllr Richard Thomas.

I am frequently told by officers that the reason why the Nunhead & East Peckham Renewal project is falling behind schedule is that they have been unable to fill six vacant positions. What steps are you taking to address this problem and ensure that the team is fully staffed as soon as possible?

I haven't got the answer electronically yet, but basically he confirmed that of the 10 posts in the project team 6 are vacant, although 2 of these are currently being covered by temporary staff. He claimed that they were making filling these posts a priority.

I'm not really convinced by this. These jobs have been vacant for months now and things that were promised to be delivered in the first year, like installing £900,000 worth of new street lighting, just haven't materialised.

I've also found out that they have no staff trained in the new Housing Health & Safety Rating System so they can't process applications from low income pensioners for home improvement grants. This may be partly the fault of civil servants in the ODPM, it seems they only published final details of the system in February when it was due to come into force in April. Still, we're into July now and it's about time the staff were trained.

So in my follow up question I told Cllr Thomas about this and asked if he'd met with the team himself yet (he's only been in the job a month) and if he was satisfied with the current situation. He admitted he hadn't met with them yet, but would be doing so soon.