Plans to move council housing services such as debt management and repair work into the hands of tenants in a new resident-led service cost Kingston Council more than £20,000 before they were scrapped, the Comet can reveal.

In total, the council spent a staggering £20,551 on a four-month long “roadshow” for the Community Housing Trust (CHT) that never was.

The CHT had aimed to give council tenants more control over the running of social housing services – but it was abandoned by the council last month, with claims Government cuts had made introducing the scheme “morally wrong”.

Estate residents have since questioned the council’s approach to the CHT, claiming the consultation process led to the scheme’s failure and demise.

Jill Preston, chairman of the Cambridge Road Estates Community Group, said: “Residents didn’t know what was going on and only key residents were in the loop.

“They didn’t involve us in the consultation properly.

“They say they did a lot of door knocks, but I don’t think they got a lot of answers.

“There was so much distrust it was never going to happen.”

Alongside door knocks, the council said it spent money on specialist research groups and public meetings to gauge residents’ reaction to introducing the trust.

A breakdown of its costs included £8,225 spent on information materials, £3,348 on distribution, £3,000 on room hire for public meetings and £4,500 on independently-facilitated focus groups.

Tenants in Sheephouse Way, and on the Kingsnympton, Cambridge Road and Alpha Road estates would have been affected by the changes said to give them more control of social housing services.

Councillor Cathy Roberts, lead council member for housing, said: “The council ran a comprehensive campaign in order to raise awareness of the Community Housing Trust proposals among tenants and leaseholders and consult them on their views.

“With 6,000 council homes across the borough, running a campaign of this nature isn’t cheap, but it was vital that we communicated the proposals effectively and gave tenants and leaseholders an opportunity to express their views.”

The trust was first proposed by the Kingston Federation of Residents’ to fit in with the council’s plan to become a commissioning council and outsource its services.

Federation Secretary Richard Grosvenor said: “To adequately explain the real benefits of a CHT to residents would have required a very different campaign costing 10 times more than was allocated by the council.

“Unfortunately, the council sought to deliver the whole project on a shoestring, and this was never going to be enough.”

News of the £20,000 failed CHT spend comes after a series of Kingston Conversation events where residents were asked what they would like to see cut from council services in the wake of looming budget cuts.

In July Kingston Council claimed in its Home Life magazine the trust would be based on the “successful” Welwyn Hatfield Council’s own CHT.

That council had put its own CHT scheme under review three months previously.

Harry Hall, from the Cambridge Road Estate Residents’ Association, was a member of the “specially selected” CHT Shadow Board that explored the proposals.

He said: “The actual concept of the CHT is a great idea, but you can’t explain something as complex as a CHT on a doorstep.

“There were bugs within the CHT and it wasn’t going anywhere.”