Loughborough Estate faces another HMRC winding-up petition as residents slam Labour election sham

The Loughborough Estate Management Board (LEMB) faced its second HMRC winding-up petition in seven months at the High Court yesterday. Residents’ representatives in attendance at the hearing in the Rolls Building in Fetter Lane, EC4 were placed under strict instructions from the court not to divulge any details to the press.

However, Lambeth’s November 2025 audit which gave LEMB the lowest possible ‘No Assurance’ rating, uncovered not only questionable spending on gifts, foreign trips and petty cash, plus widespread procurement and governance failures, but no evidence whatsoever of VAT returns being filed, which raises speculation as to the grounds for the HMRC petition.

The first winding-up petition was filed in August 2025 and dismissed in October after LEMB supposedly reached a settlement with HMRC. The new petition suggests either that settlement was never paid, or LEMB has accumulated fresh tax debts in the intervening months.

Separately, Loughborough Voices, the residents’ campaign group that has spent over six years exposing LEMB’s failures on repairs, maintenance, governance and financial management, has condemned a recent letter to residents from the Labour party seemingly taking credit for ‘standing up for you’ and claiming councillors have been ‘working with residents and the community to hold LEMB to account.’

Tim Gingell from the group told Brixton Buzz that numerous assurances given by the council, including in December 2024 about closer work with residents, have not led to any meaningful joint action.

He went on to say that the Labour letter attempted to take credit for the continuous pressure actually asserted by Loughborough Voices. It gives the false impression that councillors “have been working assiduously with residents to effect change” and was “quite galling, to say the least.”

“Better oversight over the last six years would have got us to the point we are now much sooner.” – Tim Gingell, Loughborough Voices

The residents’ campaign has secured national news and television coverage, while LEMB chair Peter Shorinwa’s notorious ‘devil’ letter made it into Private Eye’s Rotten Boroughs section, helping to force Lambeth Council into action after years of inaction.

In a statement, Loughborough Voices said:

“Residents must not be gaslit into believing that the authorities who failed to act for so long were all along leading the struggle on our behalf. The history of this estate says otherwise.” – Tim Gingell, Loughborough Voices

LEMB has been managing the 1,000-home estate for fifteen years under chair Peter Shorinwa, funded with £3 million per year of public money from Lambeth Council. Over that time, Loughborough Voices say, LEMB took an organisation with reserves and surpluses and drove it into deficit.

Questionable expenditure included approximately £450,000 on LEMB-branded gifts without clear public accounting, foreign trips to Turkey and Las Palmas, and widespread failures in procurement and governance – culminating in two HMRC Winding-up petitions in seven months.

As LEMB’s long list of failings began to attract media attention, 68 percent of residents voted in February 2025 to remove LEMB and return management to Lambeth Council. LEMB declared the ballot invalid citing procedural issues.

However it took until 17 March 2026 for Labour-run Lambeth to issue a final warning giving LEMB fourteen days to re-run the Continuation Ballot, convene a valid AGM, and distribute the long-delayed audit to residents, threatening High Court action if LEMB did not comply by 30 March.

With that deadline now passed and all eyes on Lambeth’s next move, Loughborough Voices’ analysis of the Modular Management Agreement (MMA) that governs the relationship between councils and Tenant Management Organisations (TMOs) now reveals that Lambeth had far stronger powers over LEMB than it has publicly admitted. The MMA allows Lambeth to terminate the agreement immediately if LEMB becomes insolvent, take control via Supervision Notice for serious failings, or end the agreement following a breach process – exposing repeated claims of ‘limited powers’ as potentially misleading.

Despite arguably having these powers under existing MMA, Lambeth took political cover behind Housing Secretary Steve Reed in December 2025, asking the Streatham MP and former Lambeth leader to look at national rules governing Tenant Management Organisations to give councils stronger powers over failing TMOs like LEMB.

Reed has not responded publicly to Lambeth’s request but was reported yesterday by The i Paper as the headline speaker at a Labour Party ‘curry night’ fundraiser in October where major housing developers paid £2,000 per table for access – the kind of access that social housing groups and homeless charities told The i Paper they are denied.

Brixton Buzz has contacted Lambeth Council and LEMB for comment on the latest Winding-up petition.

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STOP PRESS: Wow! I’ve just had a voicemail from my local MP Steve Reed:

“One chicken bhuna, one tarka daal, a mushroom rice and two chapatis. And if you can bring me a bottle of sauvignon blanc, that would be great.”

I’ve no idea how he got my number!?!

I guess after recent months of requests for comment from the Brixton Buzz newsroom, a post-it note message must have eventually strayed onto his desk:

Q: Could the minister explain why countless millions continue to be funnelled towards private equity temporary accommodation giants while the building of new council houses is minimal?

Q: Will you intervene on behalf of your constituents and ask your Labour Party colleagues running the council to save our much loved Lambeth Country Show and please not give the space to private equity festivals?

Q: Could you please help to protect our ‘No Casino’ policy in Lambeth in the same way you’re campaigning against casinos in Croydon?

Ha! Joke! – of course it’s a late April Fool, I’m joking!

The discerning diner will be fully aware that while the labour movement (and Lambeth Council) is full of good, honest people who believe in fairness and equality, the people that run the Party primarily cater to the tastes, preferences and interests of private equity – developers, arms firms, gambling.

The Party does do a great smoke and mirrors act that it does its best to represent working people. But the flaw is irreparable: you either represent the vast majority of the population or you represent private equity.

This particular Party has reached its sell-by date. Enjoy the curry Steve.

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Disclaimer: The feature image is a parody image, and at no point to our knowledge did council leader Claire Holland question Steve Reed about housing developers paying £2000 to have a curry with him. And at no point has Steve Reed ever said ‘no comment’ in response to Brixton Buzz or anyone else that we are aware of. And at no point have either of them been to Loughborough Estate as far as we know.