The Marble Arch Mound

• ACCORDING to Crisis, it costs £1,426 to help a homeless person off the streets successfully.

For the £6million it cost to build the Marble Arch Mound, Westminster City Council could have helped over 4,200 people off the streets.

It costs £300,000 to build a new council flat.

— For £6million the council could have built 20 new council homes for families in housing need at rents they can afford.

It costs £50 to fill a pothole in the road.

— For £6million, Westminster Council could have filled 120,000 potholes in Westminster’s roads.

A new laptop computer costs £300.

— For £6million, Westminster Council could have given a new computer to 20,000 primary, secondary and university students living in Westminster.

Instead, we got a useless mound which attracted less than 1,400 people a day, on average, even though it was free for the six months it was open.

The footfall generated by 1,400 people would not register anything meaningful on Oxford Street retailers’ tills.

Boris Johnson’s Westminster Conservatives have wasted £6million of public money at a time when that money could have been better spent on helping residents rebuild after the pandemic and prepare for the economic storms ahead.

It’s time for Westminster Conservatives to be booted out and replaced by a Labour council that will put people first and end the financial scandals.

PAUL DIMOLDENBERG
JUDITH SOUTHERN
MD SHAMSED CHOWDHURY
Labour Candidates for Hyde Park ward