Aidan White talks to the councillor who says he was let down over Newham’s housing crisis

An independent inquiry into Newham’s role as a landlord released last month indicates how council leaders were in the dark over a catastrophic situation that led to a crushing rebuke from the government’s housing regulator.

The probe, carried out by lawyers Capstick, says information on housing operations was sometimes unreliable. Councillors responsible for housing did not have the full facts about the crisis.

Councillor Shaban Mohammed who resigned as a Cabinet member and Council lead on housing, says he was let down by Council officers and made a scapegoat for the crisis.

Paul Martin, Newham’s Chief Executive since last year, took note of Councillor Mohammed’s complaint at a top-level meeting on 27 January where he acknowledged that Newham’s housing failures were operational and not political.

Newham was the first Borough in the country to be awarded the lowest possible grading by the new social housing regulator after an
inspection revealed the Council had 9,000 overdue fire safety actions and two-fifths of its homes had not had electrical condition tests for more than a decade.

Councillor Mohammed, who represents Canning Town North where he was born and grew up, was the only person made accountable, even though, as he told Newham Voices in an exclusive interview, the Council leadership was kept in the dark by council officers.

In fact, shortly after the storm broke a number of council chiefs quit to take up new jobs.

Councillor Mohammed said: “Not one person in senior management put their hands up to take responsibility for what were clear operational and management issues which we did not have information about. It feels more and more apparent that I was made a scapegoat.”

The Capstick report examined the oversight of Newham’s housing service in the months leading up to and after the Regulator of Social Housing’s inspection in 2024, which led to the C4 grading and concluded that there had been “very serious failings” in Newham, which required “fundamental changes”.

Councillor Mohammed says the Council could have avoided the crisis by admitting the problems in advance and referring themselves to the regulator. In those circumstances the lowest grading would have been avoided.

He said that the affair had a serious impact on him personally, including affecting his mental health. “It’s been draining, my health has been affected. I feel badly let down,” he said. “Particularly as over the years I have built up good relationships with residents in the Borough.

Although a resignation was unavoidable, Councillor John Gray, his predecessor as Council lead on housing, agrees that Councillor Mohammed was let down by Council officers.

He said Shaban Mohammed was left with little choice but to resign. “Even if it’s not your fault, you have to take the blame, that’s the responsibility of the position you hold.”

He said: “I understand why he feels he was let down. Unfortunately there was a culture in which people preferred to bury bad news rather than open up and take responsibility.”

Looking to the future Shaban Mohammed says: “We have to make sure that this never happens again. There needs to be more effective monitoring and more access to reliable information. The housing service needs to be constantly reviewed.”

John Gray agrees. “The Capstick report did pull its punches, but now we have no choice but to be a compliant landlord and officers must be more accountable. We have to make sure there is no infighting between councillors and officers.”

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