Council delays PFI verdict until after local elections

Tomorrow's (Wednesday 19 April, 1pm) Council Executive meeting will now NOT be deciding whether to go ahead with the controversial Comprehensive Regeneration plan (the PFI) for Little London. The decision has been put back another month until the next Council Executive meeting on 17 May - another month of uncertainty and worry for our community. However, the Save Little London lobby outside Leeds Civic Hall at 12.30pm WILL be going ahead.

After six miserable years of broken promises, dodgy votes, council silence, more consultation and delays, we were hardly shocked to hear that Leeds City Council has once again failed to keep to its own timetable. But why has the decision been delayed again?

Could it be that the elected members of Leeds City Council - the councillors - are deliberately waiting until after the local elections on 4 May before they announce that they want to demolish or sell off 425 homes to private developers so as to avoid a backlash at the polls? Announcing that they want to go ahead with the PFI so shortly before the council elections would have certainly attracted a lot of negative publicity and tenants would have remembered only too well the public support given to the PFI by Lib Dem Councillor, Linda Rhodes-Clayton. It is worth remembering that Councillor Clayton, who will be defending her seat on 4 May, does not live in Little London but somewhere near Roundhay.

Or is that once again, Leeds City Council has failed to get its act together and is still trying to perform miracles with a calculator to make a business case to the government for the PFI scheme in Little London? This is probably more likely given the Council's past record. Remember Swarcliffe, anyone? The Council took six years to get a PFI contract signed for housing regeneration in the area.