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

The Loughborough Estate Management Board 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 …

Apr 2, 2026 - 07:03

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

The Loughborough Estate Management Board 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.

*[Loughborough residents demand Lambeth sack LEMB 15.10.25]*

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 residents group Loughborough Voices 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.

*[Loughborough residents at Town Hall 15.10.25]*

He went on to say that a recent letter from Labour delivered to residents 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 from residents group 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 from residents group 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.

*[£450k worth of LEMB gifts which some residents brand as ‘tat’]*

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.

*[Residents complain that repairs are not carried out]*

With that deadline now passed and all eyes on Lambeth’s next move, Loughborough Voices’ analysis of the MMA now reveals that the council had far stronger powers over LEMB than it has publicly admitted. The Management Agreement 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.