• IN my letter (CIP has brought devastation too, July 9), I offered Cllr Danny Beales a tour of the disaster sites of the Community Investment Programme in Gospel Oak.

I await a response.

I now extend another invitation, this time to Cllr Richard Olszewski, the cabinet member with responsibility for finance, to explain to residents how over £10million was lost to the council’s coffers over the last 12 months.

To remind him, this was the £5million lost on the bungled Wates contract to replace the cladding on the Chalcots, the £2.5million compensation which had to be paid to a developer for the mismanagement of a tendering exercise, and the “over £3million” unpaid “overage fee” due to the council revealed by John Gulliver, (Mission to uncover missing millions, July 9).

Presumably the promise, now over three years ago, for a “full and transparent” independent investigation into the original PFI Chalcot £210million “refurbishment”, will no longer happen.

Alternative uses for the missing £10million could have included to sustain the existence of Carlton school (proposed for closure in October last year) for 50 years or the payment of the now reimposed (half) rent on all Camden community centres for 10 years.

Perhaps the chair and vice-chair of the council’s audit and corporate governance committee, Cllr Abdul Quadir and Cllr Alison Kelly, could also contribute to the explanation.

We hear frequent complaints, rightly, from council cabinet members about central government cuts in their budgets and the underfunding of the cost of the Covid-19 pandemic.

However, it would appear that the loss of this £10million is to be placed solely and squarely at the council’s door. Or am I being unfair, or got it wrong?

The named councillors have the opportunity to correct me through your letters pages.

MICK FARRANT,
NW5