The Waste & Possible Fraud at Southwark Council

Here is the letter that I wrote to Mr Gibbins a Journalist with the BBC

Dear Mr Gibbins

Your Southwark Council report “Council estates repairs went £6m over budget” by Ruby Gregory of the 1 August 2025 (https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/articles/cz93x2q9gdpo ) does not even scratch the surface of the issues around Southwark Construction and Maintenance. The Seniors within the council have honed a strategy that allows for unchecked waste, or worse. Their excesses are forcing the council into bankruptcy and denying crucial services to the genuinely vulnerable. Seniors from other departments have expressed their frustration as it impacts upon their services.

I am the best person to know these facts, as I ran Southwark constructions back-office project and performance monitoring section since 2020. My manager and I attempted many times to alert the seniors of their poor performance. We even produced a report warning them that their money would run out in September 2023 unless they followed our recommendations.

There is nothing new about journalists exposing Southwark constructions waste. Strangely many of the reports note similar £6m chunks that go missing, which is worthy of a separate investigation! I have placed some links here in evidence of my claims. However, these examples are of only a fraction of what you will discover:

I was saddened to watch one of the nicest managers in the Major Works section find himself scapegoated for one of these £6M episodes, again surrounding the Canada water area (I recommend that you investigate this estate much further). I have placed a WhatsApp conversation (anonymised) to give you a third person account of what happened and why the council were unsuccessful in blaming him.

In this case, the council had miscalculated in not thinking through their false accusations insomuch as the impossibility of a junior manager like Sylvester to overspend by that much without implicating those seeking to scapegoat him.

A year later, they actually sacked the Programme Manager who had not completed his probation as a new employee. This new manager offended our seniors by pointing out their misuse of the HMRC guidelines concerning the point at which a feasibility becomes capitalised. This is mostly the reason why historically, the GLA would often refuse grant payment. There is also the gross misuse the Housing Revenue Account (HRA). Many times, I was approached by newly recruited project managers. These managers were anxious that they were expected to spend on feasibility contracts and set up costs without budget allocation. They complained that this spend was against their training and previous employment. I would quote to them the often muted saying ‘welcome to the Southwark way of working’, to which my manager would wryly smile. But seriously, the council were, and likely still spending ring fenced funds, set up by government to protect the rent payers of the borough with its legal framework. They do this as the fund is likely invisible and only due at the end of year. This fund is plundered repeatedly on the same schemes, just renamed or amended to conceal the previous spend. Paying the same contractors over again, while circumventing the council’s procurement safeguards. Several examples come to mind to name but a few, Mary Dachelour House and also drying room conversions to various blocks of flats that were known to be unsuitable from the outset, but still, they did it. I asked the Director justified making payments to contractors without going through the councils spend committee after Covid. He said that he did this to prevent them going bust.

Doubtless you will want to know why I am writing to you and what I want from it, I will explain. My manager and I became increasingly unhappy about the abuse of public money and felt vulnerable that we may in some way be scapegoated. I managed to escape via a temporary secondment to the Tenant Initiatives Team where, using my MA in housing law, I monitored five self-governing housing estates. My manager resigned to become a teaching assistant. A precondition of my release was that I help Southwark Construction procure a commercial database that would replicate those that I made for them.

On return to Southwark Construction, I was asked by the Director of Housing to produce a report that identified the many things that he suspected as wrong within the TMI team. My report went further, exposing abuses of power and mismanagement beyond anyone’s worst fears. After I left the council, the report was published see: https://southwarknews.co.uk/featured/exclusive-bombshell-dossier-reveals-southwark-councils-3-million-debt-crisis-amid-fears-that-council-estates-have-been-financially-mismanaged/

The council forced both the Director of Housing and the Director of the Tenant management team to resigning, shockingly only after publication: https://southwarknews.co.uk/area/southwark/exclusive-director-of-resident-services-resigns-from-southwark-council/ . It is even more shocking to know that the malpractices have continued even after the team were allowed to take a generous redundancy. It is of great concern that the only remaining perpetrator of the old team is now the manager and drawing an even bigger salary. It is believed that he has since allowed them to act as paid consultant to one of the estates.

It was on my return to Southwark Construction that I found myself victimised by the Director and his newly recruited Head of Service. They conspired with UNISON to constructively force me into retirement after a year of mental illness, short term memory loss and lack of confidence that has continued to affect my daily life. My professional reputation is therefore ruined and my Southwark pension is reduced as I could not make contributions in the final six months of my sickness. I have devoted my professional life, including as part time lecturer at 1^st year MA level in housing to improve social housing.

I will not rest until I see these people exposed and hopefully, I can be renumerated forf my professional and financial losses, not to mention compensation for the cruelty inflicted upon me at the hands of UNISON who colluded so callously with the councils seniors.

I have a wealth of evidence that support my many claims made here and I ask that you and your team to investigate deeper and further. For example, and FAO asking the council to report send against new builds for the last six years should support much of what I tell you.