Fudging the facts yet again

We wrote yesterday of the attempts by the BBI to gild the lily of its defeat at the county and local elections.
Now they're at it again, trying to make a silk purse from a sow's ear of a report by the Audit Commission in January this year.
According to the borough's irrepressibly boring website: "Action to improve Boston Borough Council’s strategic housing service is underway following an inspection by the Audit Commission."
The press release goes on to say that Audit Commission inspectors found that the borough council needed to have a greater focus on customers and service standards and reduce the time taken to process housing grants.
They also highlighted areas where the council needed to carry out more work with private sector landlords to increase housing options and ensure it was addressing the needs of everyone in the community.
The handout goes on: "The report also highlighted strengths, which included: providing a good range of easily accessible information and advice, the council’s work on providing housing advice, its work on preventing homelessness, and that an above average number of high-quality affordable homes are being built in the borough."
Councillor Brenda Owen, Cabinet member for housing at Boston Borough Council said: “It is pleasing to see that the inspector has recognised that the council is committed to improving its strategic housing service and found that there is “strong leadership and a clear vision” from the Leader, Cabinet, Chief Executive and the Housing and Property Manager. Resources are tight but we are committed to improving housing and giving the people of Boston value for money services that meet their needs. Of course the judgement is disappointing, but I am confident that actions already planned will help to improve the service for people in our community. There are a number of areas that we will be focussing on in the short term and we will be working hard to make the improvements the inspectors have highlighted as quickly as possible.”
It all sounds pretty good, doesn't it? - or at worst damning with faint praise.
But everything in the garden's not quite so rosy when you visit the Audit Commission's website and read their account of things.
We'll skip the complete list of lowlights, but in summary, the Commission's conclusions are:
Boston District Council is providing a poor, zero star strategic housing service which has uncertain prospects for improvement.
The council's housing strategy is out of date and has not been regularly or systematically reviewed. It has been slow to develop an effective affordable housing and private sector strategy, and its understanding of the private sector housing market is incomplete.
There is a clear corporate commitment to improvement, but significant challenges to its delivery.
Revised and more effective strategies and policies have yet to produce any significant improvement in outcomes for customers.
There is an ambitious programme of outsourcing and partnership working but this will not deliver service improvement or savings for a number of years and will be challenging for the council to deliver.
Effective management of performance is not yet embedded and the council has significant financial challenges which threaten the delivery of improvement.
Compare the two reports, and it's hard to imagine that Boston Borough Council and the Audit Commission are singing from the same hymn sheet.
Presumably the BBI thinks that we'll believe their version of the Audit Commission report, as they've often assumed gullibility on the part of the voters, and presumably see no reason for that to change.
If you'd like to read the real report, you can find it here
http://www.audit-commission.gov.uk/housing/inspection/localauthority/reports/Pages/bostonbcstrategichousinginspection11jun2009.aspx


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