LINES BLASTS "DECEITFUL" HOUSING CLAIMS

07-10-2008

Claims that Birmingham Council would put a roof over the head of released prison inmates – including paedophiles – ahead of returning soldiers have been rubbished by the city’s Cabinet Member for Housing John Lines. But bizarrely, he won’t tell us why.

Lines’ Labour counterpart Cllr Mike Leddy said on The Stirrer last Friday that the inconsistency arose from the Council’s newly introduced points system for those seeking rented accommodation (see link here).

He insists that he had previously tried to raise this issue with officers and members of the ruling Tory/Lib Dem coalition – only to be ignored.

We contacted Cllr Lines on at 6pm on Thursday evening asking for his response, but had heard nothing by the time we went to press around midnight.

As far as we were concerned this wasn’t a problem – we would publish a reply as soon as we received it.

That wasn’t good enough for Cllr Lines who left an angry voicemail claiming that the story was “deceitful” and “dishonest”.

He also complained that he hadn’t been contacted in time for a fair response.

Council press officers followed up this issue, and we had a robust and constructive discussion about how these issues should be dealt with in future.

Fair enough. But now the air has been cleared, where is Lines’ response?

Mike Leddy stands by his version of events saying, “If somebody is discharged from prison, they get 140 housing points and it was confirmed that this could be increased to 200 points at the discretion of a housing officer.

"An ex-serviceman coming out of the Forces starts at 75 and a woman with a young child gets 110 0r 120.

"I raised this with officers in May, and raised it again with at the Scrutiny committee meeting in September.  But it went to Cabinet on the 22nd and it has now been approved.

"It needs to be reviewed.  John Lines has allowed this to go through without checking the weighting given to different groups."

The Stirrer is again inviting John Lines to comment – indeed, we put off publication of this follow-up story on Saturday, Sunday and Monday to accommodate his reply.

As soon as we receive it, we’ll publish it.

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