Local councils are worse than you think

In the local government office, pinned on the cafeteria wall, was a poster. “Do you struggle to focus in meetings?” it asked. “You might find that something like knitting could help you.” I suppose that for those who just can’t concentrate on the task in front of them, the inclusive thing for an organization to do is to pay them to do something else. As a data scientist in the property sector, my first mistake was to ignore these blandishments and insist on trying to achieve something. In 2022 I joined the housing department of one of the London borough councils. Our ostensible purposes were to procure and manage temporary accommodation, to use that accommodation to support homeless applicants, and to find and prosecute rogue landlords. We had also recently absorbed another social housing