Paul Simpson, of “Plane Crash” Homes for Lambeth, is now actually trying to sell his services in consultancy! Picture kindly and irrevocably licensed by Paul Simpson from his Flickr under CC-BY-2.0. Edit: In an attempt at rebranding, Paul is now going by Paul Hutchinson Simpson.
Largely unregulated, management consultancies can provided a useful service but it is very much a case of caveat emptor (‘buyer beware’). The dubious decision by Askival, a housing and project management consultancy, to take on Paul Simpson (now rebranded as Paul Hutchinson Simpson) of the very publicly failed and abolished property development company Homes for Lambeth, demonstrates just how important that can be. The move raises questions about the judgement and competence of CEO Mike Nestor and Managing Director Malcolm Ward. Meanwhile, consultancy Newman Francis, which seems more capable (or at least possessing a greater facility for self-preservation), has begun an investigation after a media inquiry from MHN.
MHN covered the Homes for Lambeth disaster last year. The full article is here. In short, Lambeth council tried its hand at property development by setting up a property development company. That company failed, squandering around £25 million of public money and only starting (starting – not delivering) 65 houses in 5 years. At the same time the company was criticised for waste, luxury and profligacy at the expense of taxpayers – for example spending just under one million pounds on upmarket WeWork offices in Waterloo when the council that wholly owned the company had empty, but less luxurious, buildings in Vauxhall.
The story is a scandal in its own right. Many vulnerable, impoverished residents of Lambeth live in undown, unpleasant, even unsafe residences. Money which could have improved their lives was squandered on the white elephant project.
My personal interest was piqued, however, because I knew one of the key figures in the failure. Paul Hutchinson Simpson (formerly known as Paul Simpson) was a former Labour Party staffer I had the misfortune to work with nearly twenty years ago. I was not impressed then and so I was unsurprised to be able to draw a clear line between many of the failures identified in the Kerslake review, which led to the decision to close the firm, and functions that Simpson personally boasted responsibility for.
