The report on the housing maintenance contract, which examined the work carried out by Erinaceous on council homes, has left me angry and appalled.
It detailed the comprehensive and systemic failings in managing the budget and showed that there was no management, no accountability and no control.  Hundreds of thousands of pounds has been paid out incorrectly, and, as a result, much-needed renovations to council homes will now be severely delayed.
Medway’s Tories are no strangers to wasting taxpayers’ money: the £400,000 overspend on the Tour de France, the multi-million pound call centre, the flashy and redundant road signs.  This time however, it was not the Tories’ usual financial incompetence, but a complete abdication of care and control which allowed this to happen.  Even now, there are still many areas of work where the Council cannot say how much was spent, or how it was authorised. 
You may wonder where the portfolio holder was whilst this was happening – clearly he was not doing his job. It is the same portfolio holder, Councillor Tom Mason, who achieved a double zero star rating for the strategic housing service.  I am not suggesting that he knew how much money was being wasted and did nothing to stop it - quite the opposite.  I can only assume he did not take enough interest in the issue and, therefore, by default, he allowed the wild overspending to continue for nearly a year.
At the last Council meeting, we called on Cllr Mason to stand down from the Cabinet in recognition of the fact that, despite being paid £10,000 a year extra allowance, he presided over the worst strategic housing service in the country.
It would appear from these two reports that the Tories simply do not care about residents who are their tenants, and that the portfolio holder was quite happy to let services almost collapse.  However, given the arrogance he displayed at the last Full Council meeting, when he was in total denial, he will no doubt try and defend the indefensible yet again.