Warning to Minister uncovered

A TORY councillor wrote to the government claiming tenants and Camden’s housing department had “cold feet” over a refurbishment plan to improve their council estate – just months before the scheme’s shock collapse.
Camden’s Labour housing supremo Councillor Raj Chada said he was surprised that Conservative councillor Jonny Bucknell had intervened during negotiations last year over the planned private finance initiative (PFI) plan to improve the Chalcot estate in Adelaide Road, Swiss Cottage.
The much-anticipated programme collapsed last month when the Treasury pulled the plug on the deal, even though the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister had backed the scheme.
Cllr Chada said: “Nobody had cold feet. Camden was committed to this project.”
But private letters to Housing Minister Keith Hill, obtained by the New Journal through new Freedom of Information laws, show that Cllr Bucknell had poured cold water on the scheme in August last year. He said in his letter to Mr Hill: “The danger is that PFI could start in a blaze of glory but end up with the consortium holding the local authority to ransom… I seem to have less information on this than some of the tenants’ representatives but reading between the lines even some of Camden’s officers are getting cold feet.”
And in an assessment which differs from Cllr Chada’s judgement of the mood of tenants on the estate, Cllr Bucknell said: “The tenants are getting cold feet about the whole project…
“I am sure that, if the tenants were informed the current PFI has been scrapped but that the government had already made funding available for the refurbishments on a conventional basis, they would be accommodating.”
Quizzed on the letters, Cllr Bucknell insisted: “The fact is people did have cold feet about the PFI deal.”