AS was widely reported last week, Bolton Council received an excellent housing capital settlement from Central Government which will enable us to make significant headway into improving the quality of Bolton's housing stock.

Buried in the detail of the settlement was a Civil Service assessment of how well each housing department in the country was managed. The assessment recognises five levels of performance - well above average, above average, average, below average and well below average. The assessments are made by professional civil servants not by politicians.

Regular readers of the Bolton Evening News who have read week in, week out, Councillor Walsh's attacks on the competence of the Housing Department and his hymns of praise for Conservative-led councils, may wish to ponder on the following facts.

Bolton Council's Housing Department was given the highest possible rating - well above average. Of the 10 councils outside London which the Tories managed to hang onto throughout the 80s and 90s, six were rated as average, three as below average and one as well below average. Not a single one was rated as above average much less as well above average. I invite Councillor Walsh to take time off from his issuing of diatribe and press releases to give the people of Bolton his observations on these simple facts.

Councillor Guy Harkin

Deputy Leader of the Council

Chair of Housing Performance Working Party

Converted for the new archive on 14 July 2000. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.