Clays Lane: wasting time and money

I read with interest the latest chapter in the saga of Clays Lane v the Housing Corporation (“Corporation to review its power to force RSLs to merge or transfer”, 6 August, page 10). What a complete waste of taxpayers’ money, and totally unnecessary expense for Clays Lane, is this judicial review.

The Housing Corporation should immediately review its powers to save a lot of time and money for everybody.

For the corporation to offer advice and assistance to independent legal entities is one thing; to strongly recommend one company to merge with another company is another. But to try to force a cooperative to merge with an organisation other than another cooperative is totally unacceptable.

The laws of our land are made by parliament, which includes more than 30 Cooperative party MPs – a little known but independent political party that was created by cooperative societies mainly to defend cooperatives from inside parliament.

It is very doubtful they were aware that the Housing Corporation was being afforded such draconian powers. It is to be hoped that the publicity given to the case will rectify the situation.