My latest podcast episode is about an extraordinary email that a senior health professional leaked to me.

The email says that a Hackney council officer told health and medical staff to stop writing supporting letters for families who need to be moved out of terrible housing – that’s families with disabled children.

The email was circulated in this consultant’s NHS workplace.

This is outrageous. Families want and NEED these supporting letters to give to the council. The letters are medical evidence that a child’s health issues and disabilities are made worse by their awful housing. They prove that the family must be moved. Some of these letters say that disabled children are at risk of death in their homes.

But this email tells NHS staff to stop writing them.

The email is full of other rubbish. It says that families of disabled children can find a place to rent in the private sector in one month – implication being that they don’t need to get on the council housing waiting list or ask for a transfer somewhere better. A month for low income families to find a place to rent in the private sector? That’s just fantasy. We might even call that a lie.

The email also says that the council has a robust system in place “to identify need and allocate housing.”

That’s rubbish. There are families in the podcast who have letters and reports which say that their disabled children are at high risk of death because of the state of their current housing – but they still haven’t been moved.

So. I have a few theories on why a council might want to shut medical staff up on the topic of potential council failures to keep disabled children safe.