The death of two-year old Awaab Ishak is both tragic and scandalous. On Tuesday, a coroner found that the infant had died in 2020 because of exposure to persistent black mould on the the walls of the family's rented home and that the landlord had repeatedly failed to fix it, blaming the mould on "family lifestyle."
Gareth Swarbrick, the Chief Executive of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing (RBH), the slum landlords who owned the home, refused to resign over the issue and had to be dragged out of office.
Rochdale Borough Council are now calling for a charge of corporate manslaughter to be brought against the landlord and for the houses to be taken back into local authority control.
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Billionaire Sunak (with properties including 5 BHK home in Kensington, London Apartments Old Brompton Rd London, Santa Monica penthouse and Manor house in N Yorkshire) appoints millionaire #tory grifter Gove who voted against homes fit for human habitation whilst living in a £25M mansion ) to fix UK slums !
Satire as we understood it is officially dead in the UK !
Part 2 |
Any professional who does any meaningful assertive outreach in Rochdale will tell you that this absolute tragedy is simply the tip of a massive iceberg of social deprivation and slum conditions of barley habitable poverty that hasn't even begun to be exposed in terms of numbers & it will happen again whilst those tasked with providing services keep taking their extortionate salaries whilst resolutely looking the other way .
In Rochdale - as in the Kingdom of the blind- the one eyed man is king !
1 .Post script on Corporate Murder Scandal | it will be interesting to see if the following public question submitted in August 2022 to Rochdale Council will be discussed at their next meeting |
4/08/2022
Dear Chief Executive ,
RE | Written Public question to Chief Executive for Council Cabinet 14th December 2022 ( or next appropriate Committee and appropriate date ) | Freehold Flats
Please could I submit the following written public question to the next full Cabinet Meeting of Rochdale Council
The question is 100 words exactly as advised by the council's Senior Governance & Committee Officer.
As follows :
‘A two-year-old is dead and other children are struggling to breathe ‘ stated the Manchester Evening News article of 20th August 2022 *
Does the accompanying statement 'The council is working hard to address this supply issue, however, there are no immediate solutions to the wider housing crisis ’ amount to a tacit admission from the Council that children will continue to die at Freehold flats due to dangerous exposure to damp & mould ?
Is Rochdale Council continuing to receive any funding for residents at Freehold under Local Authorities | Asylum Dispersal Scheme Grant [2] ?
* https://www.manchestereveningnews.co.uk/news/greater-manchester-news/two-year-old-dead-children-24702122
[2].https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/1074994/LA_Funding_Instruction_Grant_One_May_22.pdf
2. Post script on Air Pollution Scandal |
This public interest email to Rochdale's Portfolio Holder on Climate Change & Environment remains unanswered from August 2002 !
Thousands of local people are exposed to safety breaching Air Pollution levels on a daily basis making them susceptible to so many negative health outcomes from asthma (in adults & children ) & a range of lung conditions from wheezing, bronchitis and reduce lung development and disease related mortality especially pronounced during Extreme Weather Events
Number 1 Riverside itself breaches three WHO guidelines for air pollution *
Going forward what actions will Rochdale Council Cabinet be taking in order to mitigate these huge air pollution health risks to several thousand local citizens across the townships ?
* https://www.addresspollution.org/results/2fd7a89e-a089-4f14-9be9-d3d5f12e13ab
Concerned readers might find today's joint report on housing by Crisis and Heriot-Watt University helpful ?
https://www.hw.ac.uk/news/articles/2022/300-000-households-across-britain-could-be.htm
Also Cooperative Party has a current campaign on home standards which is relevant | 59% of homes in Rochdale area fail to meet basic energy efficiency standards |
https://party.coop/insulate/
Personally I would be asking the Council how many individual prosecutions they have made against Rogue Landlords since they announced it as a priority as you know campaigners have been campaigning and raising the issue for at least a decade locally?
Rochdale Borough Housing has proved to be one of the biggest 'Rogue Landlords' in the North of England without a single prosecution by the council ?
I also find it odd in the extreme that the Freehold damp scandal happened less than 5 minutes walk from the Councils luxury £50M Riverside headquarters & a £250M town centre retail development when it was not possible to find the relatively paltry sums of money to mitigate the huge damp issues at Freehold & elsewhere
Equally it poses the unasked & unanswered question why local ward councillors & others appeared to be shocked and attended the recent Vigil whilst being notoriously absent from proactively advocating on behalf of the families before the film crews afford such ideal media opportunities to raise their profiles ?
Collectively they were more than aware ,but chose to look the other way. Any outreach worker can see the shocking slum-like conditions that have become normalised under RBH's tenure.
It would be interesting to ask Councillor Brett what he knew when he was Milkstone & Deeplish ward councillor & if this played any part in his thought processes before standing down ?
It's incredible this scandal was not exposed long before now ?
Incredible also that this kind of official avoidance & obfuscation no longer shocks or surprises me anymore about the action of the clowns & gangsters allowed to run this town with impunity
There is a huge scandal and collective cover up under all this detritus and in my view significant corruption and nepotism to be exposed at the rotten core of this talentless local political and administrative class .
The current tragedy being the tip of an iceberg. Police investigations should follow for Board members and certain RBH Housing Officers but probably won't lest they take the lid off a very ugly can of worms
1. Why was RBH set up without the requirement to answer FOI requests?
This is a huge story of cover-up and maladministration in and of itself ?
2.Why was Swarbick allowed to go from| Rochdale Council to CEO of RBH without this raising huge questions of conflict of interest in his appointment ? This could not happen without the pre-existing normalisation of a highly dysfunctional dual appointment culture such as CEO of Rochdale Council Rumbelow Steve supposedly doing two full time jobs at RMBC and HMR NHS CCG .This is was and of course remains an absolute nonsense but continues to be normalised and mostly unchallenged locally except for Northern Voices | http://northernvoicesmag.blogspot.com/2021/02/rochdales-problematic-top-job.html
3.Are persistent rumours true that Rochdale Council was aware of the appalling dilapidation of much of its housing stock and so dumped them onto RBH to avoid huge renovation and repair costs ?
FOI ( Freedom of Information Requests ) data obtained by civil litigation experts CEL Solicitors has revealed London & Quadrant (L&Q) Housing Trust was the subject of 1,348 objections to the Housing Ombudsman Service between the start of 2020 and the end of June 2022. That puts the private company well ahead of its nearest rival Clarion Housing Group Limited, which racked up 885 complaint cases during the same period.
Rochdale Borough Housing in its collective wisdom has just appointed Yvonne Arrowsmith who ran L&Q housing as interim CEO as 'caretaker' CEO of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing .It seems the Boards stupidity knowns no bounds.
This will not , mark my words, end well for the long suffering tenants of RBH
Whilst those gullible enough to still believe the long overdue intervention by Rochdale Council riding over the hill like the 7th Cavalry to somehow save them from the very people the same council abandoned them to initially are only going to find themselves scalped in yet another messy fracas of vested interests meet invested rents
FOI ( Freedom of Information Requests ) data obtained by civil litigation experts CEL Solicitors has revealed London & Quadrant (L&Q) Housing Trust was the subject of 1,348 objections to the Housing Ombudsman Service between the start of 2020 and the end of June 2022. That puts the private company well ahead of its nearest rival Clarion Housing Group Limited, which racked up 885 complaint cases during the same period.
Rochdale Borough Housing in its collective wisdom has just appointed Yvonne Arrowsmith who ran L&Q housing as interim CEO as 'caretaker' CEO of Rochdale Boroughwide Housing .It seems the Boards stupidity knowns no bounds.
This will not , mark my words, end well for the long suffering tenants of RBH
Whilst those gullible enough to still believe the long overdue intervention by Rochdale Council riding over the hill like the 7th Cavalry to somehow save them from the very people the same council abandoned them to initially are only going to find themselves scalped in yet another messy fracas of vested interests meet invested rents
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