WE HEAR a lot about homelessness at Christmas and sadly Taunton Deane is no exception to the rule.

Three charities immediately come to my mind, namely Open Door, Taunton Association for the Homeless and the Food Bank on the Belvedere Road Estate, all of which do wonderful work for those in desperate need locally.

One little known fact about the expression “Charity begins at home” is the manner in which the Tory administration running Taunton Deane Borough Council is in the process of flagrantly abandoning this principle by allowing the distribution of its Housing Revenue Account (HRA) to support West Somerset District Council.

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Taunton Deane has the obligation to look after our social housing as well as council house tenants and house the homeless too – but the Tory administration have started to show they cannot be trusted to manage these accounts in the interest of residents.

They raided the housing revenue account (HRA), public money, to the tune of nearly £2m to prop up a failing council of West Somerset, I am referring to the £1.984m being transferred for the implementation of the merger on July 26 at its council meeting from the HRA.

We will have a huge problem with tenants to support any future increase to keep services.

It is worrying when we hear from our tenants that the maintenance programme for their properties has been put back due to lack of funding and yet our Tory administration is hell bent to spend their money 25 miles away with a different authority.

Furthermore what will the future hold for our very own building maintenance arm of the Direct Labour Organisation (DLO), who have the contract to maintain our housing stocks, if we were to run out of money?

Readers should be aware too that West Somerset Council sold its council houses a long time ago, mainly to balance the books, and therefore its requirements bear so little in relation to TDBC.

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This illustrates the inequality facing the people who are just about managing, where some of our most disadvantaged section of our community will have to pay for another authority’s failure, a decision they did not want or choose, or were indeed given the mere courtesy of consultation.

Is it time that our decision makers reconsider their position and do the right thing?

Is it surprising that I view with nothing but cynicism this Tory way of portraying a perverse Robin Hood mentality?

FRAN SMITH
Cllr Blackbrook and Holway Ward
Taunton