40 tweets

So.

You’ll be pleased to hear that even as Call Me Dave liberates the grateful people of Libya, his ground troops in the UK continue to target the most vulnerable of his own citizens. Nothing like consistency, as I consistently say.

Tomorrow night, Hammersmith and Fulham council’s Tory cabinet will take a decision to close Tamworth – a 14-unit hostel for people with mental health issues. These people are among the borough’s most compromised as far as mental health goes. They need medium to high-level supported accommodation and care.

Tough titty for them, though: the council has decided to close the Tamworth hostel in the interests of strafing Supporting People funding for a £300,000 medium term financial strategy saving.

“The closure of Tamworth will allow the Supporting People funding to contribute towards the mental health placements budget savings,” tomorrow’s cabinet report tweely observes, for all the world as though mental health care budgets should be encouraged to hand themselves in. Existing residents will be shifted into alternative accommodation, and the council will flog the building off – generally its aim with useful community buildings.

Staff and union reps are furious, and accuse the council of manipulating the service out of existence.

The council says (of course) that the hostel building is in poor repair and that the service itself is underutilised. Unions reps argue that all buildings deteriorate without investment and proper maintenance, and that the Tamworth service is underutilised because referring agencies have been told not to send people to it.

The cabinet admits to this controversy in its own report for Monday evening:

“Staff were in opposition to the proposal to close Tamworth because they believed the service was still needed to house and support the high needs client group. There was concern that the reason Tamworth has been operating under capacity was that referrals had deliberately stopped. Staff were reassured that this was not the case and that evidence of capacity across all mental health supported housing demonstrates that the borough can provide for those that need this type of accommodation with 14 fewer units.”

So that’s all right, then.

Staff were not, of course, reassured that they’d continue in work – all ten will be made redundant. Unions have been told that in the current environment, it is unlikely there’ll be other employment opportunities for these people. Tomorrow’s cabinet report says the same thing.

Whether the council will provide high-support accommodation in an ongoing fashion is another point of debate. The council says the closure presents no “immediate risk” to the eight mental health service users presently housed at Tamworth “because there are sufficient voids elsewhere.” That’s now, though. What will happen as the months roll by and other services are sacrificed to the Great God Deficit and the almighty Hammersmith-Kensington Chelsea-Westminister cost-cutting, service-rationalising merger? Hammersmith is hardly famous for making immediate provision for vulnerable residents, let alone long-term plans. When Tamworth is gone, it’ll be gone. Perhaps the council envisages a future where mentally ill locals piss off altogether and seek help in other, more forgiving, boroughs (if there are any at the end of this slaughter).

Re: the Libya war: Chris Underwood at the excellent Shepherd’s Bush blog has this priceless line from council leader Stephen Greenhalgh at the Hammersmith and Fulham budget-setting meeting a month ago:

“Cllr Greenhalgh… stated that central government was paying more on interest rates than on national defence [which was why drastic service cuts were necessary].”

Wonder when he’ll be recalculating that one.

Here are a few numbers to help him out:

Cost of running Tamworth each year: £350,000 approx. Cost of a Tomahawk missile: about £300,000.

There will be a Save Tamworth protest tomorrow at 6pm: Hammersmith and Fulham town hall in Kings Street W6 9JU.