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Lewisham Council missing more crucial documents

In an incredible repeat, Lewisham Council admits of being unable to show any document to back another important written statement made by a Cabinet Member at Council Meeting.

This time the subject matter is the initial financial study that the Council says was done and that showed that a new Leisure Centre in Lewisham was affordable.

In a written answer to a question from the public at Full Council meeting on 26th october 2005, Cllr Alyson McGarrigle wrote:

"The Sundermead Pool is at an early stage of development. The data collected for the initial financial study confirmed the project to be viable (as stated in the reply to Public Question number 6 of 14th September 2005). The cost information for this came from a number of sources, including a specialist leisure consultant."

We asked Lewisham Council for any documents related to this initial financial study here mentioned adding that we were particularly interested in the specialist leisure consultant input.

Here's the answer that we received:

Re: Freedom of Information Act 2000 – Information not held

Your request for information has now been considered.

First, I wish to apologise for the delay in providing you with a response.

While I acknowledge that your request has far exceeded the statutory deadline, I wish to state that it has been given the highest priority throughout and many officers have spent considerable time attempting to retrieve the information requested.

I am sorry to inform you that the information requested is, to the best of our knowledge and ability, no longer held by us.

I am sorry that we cannot be of greater assistance on this occasion.

Yours sincerely,

Unfortunately, though Council officers say that the information is no longer held by them, somehow the suspicion that those documents had never been held by them just doesn't go away.

How could Lewisham Council lose the financial study for the new Leisure Centre?

Is it really possible?

Is it just pure incompetence or is it incompetence coupled to an attempt of covering up?

If that was to be the case then some fresh serious questions would need to be answered:

- How can the Mayor give a date for the new Leisure Centre if he doesn't even have a financial study that tells him how to pay for it?

- How can the Council say that it will be a mixed use development including housing, office, retail and leisure space if they don't even have a preliminary study?

Last year Lewisham Council consulted on the expansion of Northbrook School and sent a consultation form to every parent of children of school age living north of the South Circular.

Lewisham Council bosses thought that it was appropriate to use this form to also justify the decision to close the Ladywell Leisure Centre and slipped into the paragraph entitled background the following statement:

"the decision on the closure of the Leisure Centre was taken in the knowledge that the Lewisham Gateway scheme, providing a new 'state-of-the-art' swimming pool and leisure centre in central Lewisham, is now a certainty"

To write things like those without a financial study that tells you that you can afford it amounts to deliberate public deception.

But, whatever the case, even if they just lost it, with this level of carelessness we cannot afford that Lewisham Council proceeds with the closure of the Ladywell Leisure Centre before a credible plan for a replacement is presented to the public. ...read more...