The Peterborough Evening Telegraph
Council ‘signed bad deal at St Michael’s Gate’
The shadow housing minister has described the deal to move homeless families into St Michael’s Gate as a “bad judgement call, bad decision and a bad contract.”
John Healey was critical of Peterborough City Council’s deal with housing firm Stef & Philips when he visited the Woodston offices of housing association Cross Keys Homes last Thursday.
The shadow minister was joined by Labour colleague Fiona Onasanya, the MP for Peterborough, and Cllr Ed Murphy, Labour group leader at the city council.
He said: “This has been a bad deal whichever way you look at it, right from the start. Even the Conservative leadership of the council seem to think it stunk before they signed it.”
St Michael’s Gate in Parnwell hit national news last September when the Peterborough Telegraph exclusively revealed the council had agreed to move homeless families into 72 homes after a private housing firm had begun evicting the existing tenants.
The council struck a deal worth nearly £1 million a year over three years to use the homes as temporary accommodation. It argued that if it did not use the homes, London boroughs would move homeless people from their area into the estate instead.
Mr Healey said: “To some extent the council is between a rock and a hard place, but it’s put itself in that position.”
He said Labour’s policy to introduce three year tenancies would have prevented the St Michael’s Gate situation.
He added: “If you had 72 people who had at least three years on their tenancies, the opportunity for this company to make a fast buck, to do this dirty deal with the council, and force the council to make a rapid decision without checking out the full facts, would have been greatly reduced.”