Lewisham Council housing consultation

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admin
Site Admin
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Joined: 20 Sep 2004 21:49

Lewisham Council housing consultation

Post by admin »

Michael Moncrieff from Lewisham council asked me to post this (not sure why he couldn't post it himself, but never mind!)


Hello,

The council are currently consulting on our housing strategy for 2020-26.

We want to hear from residents so we can make sure we are taking the right
steps to solve the housing crisis.

Details of how we are proposing to do this are available at the link below,
as is the consultation.


https://consultation.lewisham.gov.uk/st ... erhousing/

I was hoping that you might be able to promote this important consultation
on your Sydenham Town Forum?

If there is any further information you would like please do not hesitate
to let me know.
Thanks
Michael
JGD
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Joined: 5 Feb 2018 11:39
Location: Perry Hill, SE6 (free-transferred to Perry Vale Ward, next to Bell Green; distinct from Sydenham).
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Re: Lewisham Council housing consultation

Post by JGD »

Tried it - got through five pages and then used save and return option and received a confirmatory email from the council with the unique code for retrieval.

Glad to see the self-destruct censor mode is still effective in Lewisham ICT- my entry was blanked by the consultation system.

Emailed for help - no response from Lewisham. And so, without an integrated option to back-up my initial responses to a local drive or include a copy of the entry made so far in the return email that could be cut-and-pasted into a fresh start, five pages lost it would seem. I consider that issue to be a result of lazy and/or poor design. So as a work-around, it is recommended that if you choose to engage, make a local copy of your response page-by-page.

It will almost certainly be the case that others will have good examples of this type of problem.

Not the first time of course - and if there is one major criticism, it is this.

LB Lewisham do not and seemingly cannot do consultation with the public that is meaningful and effective and most importantly error-free. It would seem that the Council (and I include officers and members - you know who you are) will misapply many measures and ploys to by-pass the act of consultation and the need to consult, avoid the mandated procedures for consultation, minimise the numbers of the electorate engaged or will elect not to publish required Notices that preface such consultations. Very few of the electorate read council meeting minutes, council reports or follow meeting broadcasts to detect when the conduct of consultations are agreed upon.

The number of times that I hear members and officers tell us that a decision on a subject matter has been made that included a consultation conducted between such-and-such-dates - never of course to have been aware that any consultation was being conducted or even existed - is innumerable.

Last night (11 March 2020) I witnessed, during the Mayor and Council meeting broadcast, one officer, in one answer, refer to two matters that included consultations. Both consultations seemingly contain flaws - not that the same officer ackowledged this error or problem to the meeting. When answering questions from Members and the Principal Law Officer about the consequence of this error (a diocese had not been issued with a formal Notice that one of their churches that was derelict was being added to the Local List), the officer attempted to argue on a refinemt of the decision criteria whilst making no reference or apology for the error of omission. This is an example of the mind-set about consultation avoidance that is prevalent.

I acknowledge one exception - the NCIL consultation using Commonplace. Even it has suffered direct criticism as not being appropriate in the form it was deployed and needed better feedback options to the users who engaged in its use. But I put that down to being part of a learning curve.

Overall - good governance it is not. What committment will members make to ensure the Council performance in this field of communication and consultation will be improved and by what measures will the improvemnt be monitored?
stuart
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Location: Lawrie Park
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Re: Lewisham Council housing consultation

Post by stuart »

Do you remember the council consultation on Sydenham Road?

When it didn't return the right result (basically favouring pedestrians over motorists) Lewisham held another aided and abetted by SydSoc. I assume that also produced the wrong result 'cos it was never published and the council did what it wanted to do anyway - which is parking on both sides of the road impeding public transport and cycling and 'control' of pedestrians so they don't get in the way of traffic.

No wonder public consultations are regarded as a delaying waste of money by so many.

Stuart
chrisj1948
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Joined: 15 Jul 2008 15:12
Location: Sydenham

Re: Lewisham Council housing consultation

Post by chrisj1948 »

When I lived in Sweden they were very proud of their MBL, medbestemmelse lag, which required employers to have formal consultations with trade unions about any change affecting the workers. I was impressed, but when I asked about implementing the decisions I was told that the law merely required the consultations and the employers were free to ignore the results completely!
JGD
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Location: Perry Hill, SE6 (free-transferred to Perry Vale Ward, next to Bell Green; distinct from Sydenham).
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Re: Lewisham Council housing consultation

Post by JGD »

chrisj1948 wrote: 13 Mar 2020 10:19 I was impressed, but when I asked about implementing the decisions I was told that the law merely required the consultations and the employers were free to ignore the results completely!
Similarly consultation obligations exist in Belgium and France - but trade unions there can veto ongoing plans if consultation results are not acted upon and implemented.
mosy
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Joined: 21 Sep 2007 20:28
Location: London

Re: Lewisham Council housing consultation

Post by mosy »

JGD wrote: 12 Mar 2020 11:35 ...
So as a work-around, it is recommended that if you choose to engage, make a local copy of your response page-by-page.
...
This form might be different but the usual LBL site, e.g. council tax etc, uses drop-down boxes of extendable length that don't print or don't print correctly as they omit much but include anything subsequently edited by overwriting.

According to the internet, it is possible to print out "fillable reply boxes", which I haven't yet wrapped my head around. However, if you've already cracked it, perhaps pretty please you could give us the steps to use that are easier to follow to print successfully.

Would much appreciate it as I've just given up in the past and where possible written a letter instead.

Ta.
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