Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
THE final chapters hit the pavement: the end of books?
Credit: Inside Croydon
HARINGEY is one of the councils where an Exceptional Financial Support pack has been arranged.
- But for the Government's package (effectively an overdraft with onerous terms), our local council would/may-still teeter on bankruptcy
- Haringey Council has already slashed Borough Library opening hours by close to one third
- Six bankrupt councils had Government administrators appointed ("Interventions", at the foot of the Govt. Guidance page)
- One of them is Croydon, but their assault on public libraries is worse than Haringey's
- Today, the BBC carries a story, ex-Inside Croydon, about hundreds of library books dumped on a pavement
Can Haringey, Borough of Culture 2027 avoid a similar fate?
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Tags for Forum Posts: Borough of Culture 2027, Croydon, Haringey Council, Library Services
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Stephen Cox
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Libraries
-a free non commercial space whether people of all ages can gather, warm in winter and usually cool in summer
-somewhere students or others can work
-something centring the provision of knowledge and entertainment as a social good
-a place to explore new work
yes internet, but there are dozens of reasons why the internet cannot and should not make libraries redundant
point the ire at the ideology which got us here. not so much individual councils balancing libraries against child protection etc
They were the triumph of the Victorian age, accepting that we needed to tax property owners to serve societies broader needs
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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STEPHEN, yes, I agree with all this up to the ideology which got us here, which is vague and in any event, whose applicability to our Council is limited.
For years, Haringey did well to keep all its nine libraries open while other councils were closing theirs. They deserve credit for that.
However, the previous Administration, for a 36 month period, was a menace to public funds. This included a series of irregular property deals.
You won't read about this in the council's corporate puff-publication, "PEOPLE" and least of all, the people responsible.
Nine of these deals were considered by an external investigator in the Buss Report. The council has done its level best to bury this report. The full version was sent to the Police which suggests criminality in relation to at least one of the deals.
Total losses to public funds are likely to be in eight figures, but it is quickest to identify £9m, with just three of the deals:
- Alex House: £6,000,000 to a shell company (?!)
- Shaftesbury House: £1,900,000 loss*
- Cranwood: £1,300,000 overpayment
These are three of those we know about; the property wheeling and dealing deserve a public enquiry.
*A factory in another Borough, empty for all the years since its purchase; the loss was crystallised in January 2025).
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You won't find me extolling the virtues of the current administration.
I meant only austerity and the hollowing out of the public sphere since 2010, as the big picture. Councils can be more or less effective within that.
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That's fair.
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Hello Clive.
You mention that the Buss Report suggested at least one instance of criminality.
Did the police investigate?
Given the scale of these losses and mal-administration and the resulting further diminution of services in Haringey I don't understand why the culprits have not been held to account. Even if their actions or ommissions were due to incompetence rather than criminality why has Haringey Labour shielded these people from accountability? Where are they now?
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Did the police investigate?
Brian, that's a really good question.
Haringey Council buried (a version of) the Buss Report on their server and they did not provide any link to it.
This is the link.
On page 11, the investigator "dated" this version "December 2022".
However, so sensitive was the material, that Haringey Council did not release a version for the public until months later.
It was astonishing that there were no redactions. This immediately led me to suspect that the Investigator's report had been pre-redacted.
The public version was bad enough.
But later in a (public) Council Cabinet Paper, we learnt that the "full" version of the Report had been sent to the Police. I have no doubt that was done for sound reason and with good evidence. Any evidence of criminality is likely to relate to the Cranwood deal, where the council paid more than double market value for one of two similar properties.
Last year, Ham and High journalist Charles Thomson asked the police about the status of the enquiry:
Met Police's Haringey Council 'fraud' case still ongoing
Due to some information that I came across in the research I made for the case I brought against the Information Commissioner, I am not convinced if the investigation even started.
The council leadership may be content to leave this matter on the back-burner. I expect they would much prefer to look forward to their Borough of Culture 2027 than to clean the Augean Council Property Stables.
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Thanks Clive.
This is woeful. Was Comrade Uncle Joe Ejiofor implicated? Where is he now?
There needs to be accountability for such things and people need to be seen to be held accountable.
Otherwise, trust and confidence in those in public office breaks down. Well done for trying to bring this to our attention. It is often said that 'we get the politicians we deserve'. In Haringey we must have done something particularly bad.
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IT is woeful and I completely agree about the need for accountability. I hope you might participate:
One of the few ways members of the public can hold councils to account, is by Freedom of Information Requests. These take time and effort and I've made a few. Four of them ended up in court, with an Information Rights Tribunal Judge agreeing to three of them. They all involved council property.
Can I invite you to ask the council, using WDTK, for a copy of the full Buss Report?
Council bureaucratic description is sometimes intended to minimise attention. You would need to ask for:
An independent review of the
London Borough of Haringey Council’s
arrangements for property negotiations,
acquisitions and disposals or intended transactionsI should add that—as the council does not always respond within the 20 day statutory period—such a request for the "arrangements" report, would require dedication and persistence.
Former Leader (not "Comrade Uncle") Joseph Ejiofor deserves some credit for opposing the previous leader's push for the Haringey Development Vehicle (HDV) and for formally stopping it as Leader.
However, most of the heavy-lifting to stop this PFI-on-steroids had already been made by others. Had the HDV gone ahead, Haringey Council's financial position would be even worse than it is now. In my view, former Cllr Ejiofor was not fit to be leader (and I told him so).
Some Complaints to the Local Government Ombudsman (LGO) have far more significance than others. The then-Leader's connection with the Cranwood site is a matter of public record and not least, an upheld Complaint made by a Haringey resident, to the LGO. After an LGO investigation—unusually—the former leader was Named in the LGO Report.
This Ham & High reporting is instructive:
Watchdog: Ex-council leader's conduct over housing development was ...
Inside ex-council leader's legal fight with government ombudsman
Ex-Haringey leader Joseph Ejiofor loses ombudsman court case
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson
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As an ex-librarian I completely agree with what you say. I’ve worked in the big ones like Swiss Cottage and Holborn and the tiny ones like Regents Park and Primrose Hill and their use is far more than borrowing. At Swiss Cottage there would be a queue of students before opening time every morning trying to get a study space and Regents Park would be packed at the end of the school day with kids and their homework. I know that Haringey libraries have suffered due to reduced opening hours but at least we have been spared the outright closure of them as has happened in so many other places in the country.
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