Six months ago the Audit Commission published its report into how Harrow Council was run, rating the authority as the worst run in London – worse than Hackney, Lambeth and Bexley. Worse than authorities with larger budgets and those who have lower budgets.

Since the report was published the response of the current council leadership has been to confirm they won’t be able to raise the council’s performance in key services. There has been no apology, and worse, no attempt to talk to Harrow residents to find out what their experience of council services has been, so that improvements can be made.

Indeed Harrow Council’s current leadership is continuing to mishandle a series of crucial services and decisions:

  • Harrow Town Centre – instead of thinking through carefully the future of key parts of the town centre the council is set to approve plans for 3,000 flats that will fundamentally change the character of central Harrow. Little thought has been given to the impact on schools, GPs and other services.
  • Harrow Leisure Centre – Harrow’s premier leisure facility is being redeveloped but at the cost of being slashed in size, which will make it harder for people to enjoy sports like badminton and squash.
  • Cuts to youth services – if young people have nothing to do, then some will be at risk of those encouraging crime and anti-social behaviour. Alongside more police, which the Government has delivered, proper well thought-out activities for young people are key to helping prevent crime, yet Harrow Council has cut its budget for youth services.
  • Environmental services – many Harrow residents in my advice surgeries have complained to me about Harrow becoming dirtier and shabbier over the last two years. More than £5 million has been cut from council cleaning services, reducing the number of times council cleaning teams visit every road in the borough, leaving us to put up with more litter and mess and fewer plants.
  • Adults’ services – cuts in home help and other support to elderly vulnerable and disabled people have hit particularly hard. These cuts, rejected by almost every local charity as being deeply damaging, have not been reversed. Harrow now provides a lower quality of care for vulnerable, elderly people than all but four other local authorities across the whole of the UK.

The council’s ruling leadership could have asked for help in turning round its performance. It hasn’t. It could have put in place a “turnaround plan” bringing in experts at turning round poor performance – it hasn’t. Instead we continue to get a series of excuses – with everybody else being blamed and the council’s political leadership not taking responsibility.