Home Office minister Lynne Featherstone writes a monthly column for one of her local newspapers. Here is the latest one, turning on the local council’s record on road repairs.

It sometimes seems that the only thing Haringey Council is good at is finding new ways to fail local people. So maybe we shouldn’t be too surprised to read that the borough has the worst maintained roads in England.

A new survey by the Department for Transport shows that one in five of Haringey’s main roads are in need of some kind of repair. No other council area in England has a higher proportion of main roads that need fixing. Other roads across the borough are almost as bad.

If it wasn’t so serious it would be funny. Again and again Haringey ends up bottom of the league when it comes to providing services for local people. Local people have had to deal with the Labour council’s botched introduction of a new rubbish collection scheme for example – after failing to consult properly with residents the council pursued a one-size-fits-all approach to the changes and have faced massive opposition as a result.

The Council is failing children too, despite being given extra tools to help make the local schools system work. The Coalition Government has provided extra funds to support children from the poorest backgrounds through the Pupil Premium. I fought a long running campaign to demand changes to the way schools in Haringey are funded and I was delighted when the Coalition announced it will make the funding formula fairer. In the spring the government also announced extra funds to meet demand for school places. Despite all of this, scores of local children were not even offered a place in one of Haringey’s schools when the allocations were first made in April. Even now I am still helping parents who are facing problems with school places. No fewer than four of the six London schools that the government wants to see turned into Academies are in Haringey. Why is that? Surely it is a sign that the council has consistently failed to deliver the improvements in schools that local children need and deserve and has failed to support teachers and parents to improve schools where help was needed?

Compared to schools, broken pavements and potholes in roads may seem trivial. But it is a symptom of the failure from Haringey’s Labour Council that I read about every day in my postbag and that I hear about at my constituency surgery. Broken roads and pavements matter because they damage cars, they can cause injury and they are certainly an inconvenience. They also tell a story about authorities that don’t care about a neighbourhood – just as does graffiti that isn’t cleaned away or fly-tipped rubbish that isn’t cleared up.

I love this part of London – I grew up here and I am incredibly proud to represent local people in Parliament. It is a tremendously diverse area with much that is truly great to shout about. But I am fed up with seeing the local council letting residents down. Haringey Council complains about its budgets being cut but that doesn’t explain why it always seems to be performing worse than other neighbouring boroughs.

It doesn’t explain why it chooses to spend so much money on advertising, for example, when the money could be better spend on delivering decent services to local people.

In recent weeks the councillor in charge of childrens’ services has resigned and the chief executive of the council has announced he is leaving too. My Liberal Democrat colleagues on the council have pointed out that this looks like a leadership crisis and that’s the last thing we need.

Only real change will solve the issues facing Haringey Council – change that cannot come soon enough whether you are a driver, a cyclist or just a resident who is fed up with being short changed on key services from Haringey Council.

* Lynne Featherstone was the MP for Hornsey and Wood Green from 2005 to 2015, and served as a minister in both the Home Office and Department for International Development. She is now a Liberal Democrat member of the House of Lords and blogs at www.lynnefeatherstone.org.