Kate Murray
It was an independent inquiry, so the launch of the report into the collapse of Ujima Housing Association wasn’t held in the Housing Corporation’s Tottenham Court Road HQ.
Questions remain over Ujima
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Instead the corporation’s chair, chief exec, plus various policy and communications staff and a board member who sat on the inquiry team trooped five minutes around the corner to the Building Centre for the occasion.
The corpie numbers dwarfed the turn-out of journalists (surprisingly, just two, plus one photographer) and independents (inquiry team chair Simon Braid of KPMG and team member Jas Bains of Ashram HA). It felt like a corpie event, too, with an introduction from the agency’s chair Peter Dixon, flanked by Mr Braid and corporation boss Steve Douglas, and a corporation statement handed out alongside the report. An independent inquiry, then, but with the corporation very much in charge of managing the message.
So was the report the whitewash that some had feared it would be? ‘It doesn’t feel like that to us,’ retorted Mr Dixon, while Mr Braid insisted in response that his report was a ‘balanced and well-evidenced’ one.
After short statements from Mr Braid and Mr Douglas, the trio took questions. It’s not a question of attributing blame, Mr Braid said. But if it were, it wouldn’t fall on corporation staff, the agency’s pair seemed to suggest. They headed off the question of whether corporation top brass were sorry for their part in the loss of Ujima, given that, had they acted more swiftly, they might have averted the collapse. Mr Dixon was ‘cross’ that Ujima management had wrecked the association. Mr Douglas was ‘saddened’ that an organisation which had been at the forefront of the BME sector had gone.
Corporation staff would not be disciplined over events, Mr Dixon said. It was not about finding scapegoats, but learning lessons from what had happened.
A laudable sentiment maybe, but there’s bound to be a feeling among some in the housing world that the agency’s staff have got off lightly. Coming away from the launch, it was clear that for all the independence of the inquiry, some key questions about responsibility, judgement and decision-making remain unanswered.
