Warning – you will be treated with secret disdain at this meeting. The decision has been made and the Council simply want to justify it.

Recent Freedom of Information requests have been ignored. They think they are above the law. They are not.

1. FOI request: “What is the exact number of anti-social incidents reported to the Council by the tenants of the homeless hostels directly managed by Lewisham Council over the past 12 months?” The reply is overdue and the statutory notification as to why has not been sent to me. They do not want to reply until they have the application granted. Ask yourself why.

2. FOI Request: “How many commercial/industrial properties empty for more than six months are there is LB Lewisham?” The Council hid behind S40 of the FOI Act (Data Protection – “we can’t give out owner’s details”, even though they are publically available), pretending that the question was of a personal nature!

3. The most recent FOI request made by the Taxpayers’ Alliance sought to show the surprising scale of local councils’ asset portfolios. No data exists for Lewisham, so did they again fail to supply the information required by law?

4. When all is done and dusted, a FOI request will go in to see the total amount of money spent on this project. This will be the most shocking aspect, as the kind of money they want to throw at this could be invested in permanent housing for three, four, even five times the amount of families they are proposing to house on these sites.