Barham Park

I don’t think my occasional series on Brent Liberal Democrats’ broken promises has yet touched on the Barham Park Estate in Sudbury. This is a social housing estate near Barham Park, in the Liberal Democrat Council Leader’s own ward.

Before the 2006 elections, the Liberal Democrats started a shameless scaremongering campaign implying that respected social landlord Notting Hill Housing Trust (NHHT) was a rapacious private developer who wanted to build on Barham Park.

On gaining office they, as usual, had no idea what to do so they just dithered for three years. Various Labour councillors put questions on the subject to try to chivvy them along. Now the government, which is desperate to get more house building underway as part of the fiscal stimulus, has pushed the project into actual construction.

Still it’s a shame that the tenants on the estate had to spend three years in crumbling, poorly insulated resiform flats simply because the Liberal Democrats couldn’t get their act together.