The London Development Agency is in deep manure. It has been investigated by Big Four accountants Deloittes, castigated for lack of accountability and transparency, accused of breathtaking incompetence, given large sums of money to firms that do not file accounts or keep records of how the funds were spent, and had six of its projects investigated by police over allegations of fraud.

Then last Friday Lee Jasper, the London Mayor’s chief race adviser, was suspended while the allegations of financial irregularities at the LDA are investigated by the police.

Not bad for the institution better known by the ironic cuddly sobriquet, ‘Ken’s piggy bank’.

But there’s an ominous side of LDA activity that has so far stayed below the radar screen. That is its role in the eviction and fracturing of Europe’s largest church, Kingsway International Christian Centre – or KICC for short.

Last year the LDA enticed KICC out of their property at Waterden Road, Hackney, because the land was needed for the 2012 Olympic Park. Assurances by the LDA that an alternative site would be provided for the 12,000 weekly worshippers persuaded the church to quietly leave its building in the autumn and work towards constructing a new building on the LDA-owned land at Beam Reach, Havering, Essex.

This was farcical. Did the LDA really think that a huge lively predominantly black inner-city church would fit in to that quiet semi-rural corner of Essex?

No. The LDA wasn’t at all concerned with the welfare of the church or the aptness of the move. They were simply concerned to get KICC out of its Hackney premises as quickly and quietly as possible, and therefore gave whatever assurances were necessary to achieve that end – including the offer of an entirely inappropriate site.

Surprise, surprise, ten days ago Havering Council and the London Thames Gateway Development Corporation both rejected KICC’s planning application. The church didn’t have a snowball’s chance in Hades.

The LDA of course cried crocodile tears of surprise and regret, and offered to work with KICC to work up an appeal. But meanwhile the church is left swinging in the wind with no permanent home. It is now forced into the last-ditch option of appealing to the minister of Communities and Local Government, Hazel Blears, to overturn the Havering/LTGDC decision.

LDA should have been a helpful handmaiden to KICC in its move. Instead they were a Machiavellian manipulator.

The result is unfair and unjust, and LDA’s involvement stinks.

[youtube=http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Myq75L5eC58]