This is the press, so they haven't really understood it.... There are separate 'legal' companies in the Lampton Group. All are owned 100% by the council and it's now organised into a group with 3 divisions. Lampton Community Services has 3 pieces - Recycling which runs all our waste and recycling recovery and processing; Greenspace which maintains parks, cemeteries and allotments; Coalo which carries out most of the maintenance and some improvements on Council homes. The Recycling and Coalo units provide good quality service at comparable costs as commercial providers (we think they are cheaper but it's hard to prove). Greenspace, which inherited the activity previously run by Carillion made an immediate saving - I believe in the region of £!.5M per annum - despite providing a better service (we now have a record 21 parks with Green Flags and was assessed independently as having the third best parks in London last year, which would once have been a sad joke). Overall we expect Community services to break even this year or make a small surplus. Lampton Homes develops (for example the new council houses on the former site of Acton Lodge in Brentford - known as Herings Close) plus has already built in Hounslow and Bedfont (some of which are sheltered homes run with a specialist charity) and a large development being built now in Feltham. Many of these have been bought by the council and are now council homes. Some others are retained by Lampton and rented. Lampton Homes has also bought around 400 existing homes and in virtually every one it is rented out to people nominated by the Hounslow Housing team: they are either on the list needing homes, or currently in temporary housing. Lampton break even in this activity, provides housing which has secure tenancy and is affordable at the level set by the Government at Local Housing Allowances - ensuring those on benefits have sufficient income to afford the rent. Satisfaction among tenants is very high, as is their achievement of paying their rent! Homes also makes a small surplus, or at least breaks even. Lampton Leisure is the new part of the group, having taken over the response for our leisure centres etc from the previous operator, Fusion. Like other companies in that field they made a huge loss in 2020 (about their national business, about £18M) because they basically couldn't run their business  because their customers were not allowed to attend because of lockdowns. We decided to take Leisure under our management via Lampton, but started with a greatly reduced number of members (it has been recovering rapidly) and was on track to break even this year. But we live in a different world now, and Leisure centres are a financial problem for councils across the UK (and very likely for commercial providers). We are determined to keep all these activities delivering for our residents - and indeed all the Lampton staff who are paid at least the London Living Wage, much more than peers in similar industries are typically paid - but given the new dose of austerity we will be undergoing as the government try and make up for the damage inflicted on the UK economy by the recent (and current) governments we are expecting some further painful changes in public services.

Entire Thread

Topic	Date Posted	Posted By
Running costs of Amenities	17/12/22 11:51:00	Raymond Havelock
Re:Running costs of Amenities	17/12/22 12:32:00	Jim Lawes
Re:Re:Running costs of Amenities	17/12/22 17:00:00	Guy Lambert
Re:Re:Re:Running costs of Amenities	18/12/22 13:10:00	Raymond Havelock
Re:Re:Re:Re:Running costs of Amenities	20/12/22 00:03:00	Guy Lambert
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Running costs of Amenities	20/12/22 10:35:00	Raymond Havelock
Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Re:Running costs of Amenities	27/12/22 10:18:00	Guy Lambert

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