Don't "Get Involved"

JP writes:

DON'T GET INVOLVED

Crosswhatfields has published, from time to time*, snippets of the long saga concerning the provision of five waste bins in the Sue Godfrey Nature Park in Bronze Street, a seemingly never ending and, on the face of it, very tedious tale. However, as the instigator of the whole thing, I feel that what has happened should be an lesson to all who have considered or will consider volunteering to 'do business' with our local council.

In brief, my idea last year was to provide some receptacles for the drink cans and food wrappings etc. that litter that area, especially when the weather is good; this small suggestion has developed into a fine example of bureaucracy gone mad.

I envisaged a couple of guys coming down from the council depot and taking ten minutes or so to place five of the standard blue bins close to the seats or where they would be most useful. Maximum cost – say £200 for the bins and less for the labour – £400 would seem a generous budget. Nearly a year has passed, there has been a visit by at least one council 'suit', a dozen letters and more that a dozen emails have passed back and forth, a dozen or so phone calls have been made, more that half a dozen council employees have been involved, estimates of over £2,500 plus labour have been quoted. THE BINS ARE STILL NOT IN PLACE!!

All this correspondence does not involve bins for the adjacent Ferranti Park, which I am told is 'administered' by a different council department, relevant because the recent spell of fine weather has resulted in an earlier than usual spread of garbage in both parks.

If the bins ever do arrive, I suppose the little effort required on my part to site them (as has been suggested by the council) will not be beyond me but 'Get Involved' again – NEVER.

JP

* see previous posts in April and May

Many apologies to JP who sent this letter to the blog back in May. We were waiting for an update on the other Resident Involvement project which has also been delayed by incompetence and obfuscation, but it could be another month or two before that...

Resident Led Programme (RLP) Survey

I've surveyed a few residents about the 'Capital works survey Jan 2010' (aka the Resident Led Scheme Questionnaire) that dropped onto our doormats last week.

My survey showed that:
- 25% didn't know what Resident Led Scheme the questionnaire was referring to
- 25% had put it straight into their Lewisham Homes folder/recycling/bin
- 50% who realised it referred to the new Ball Court next to Farrer – and duly filled out the questionnaire – found that there was no Freepost envelope – and no return address listed on the questionnaire or the accompanying leaflet (which some didn't get) so they couldn't return it.

Others remembered a previous questionnaire sent out about the basketball/football court that had various options for us to choose from which they had filled out and returned. They discovered later that they had voted for the fenced-in option, but didn't recall seeing any results of the consultation.

FYI:
- The court is smaller/shorter than anyone ever imagined
- The young adults and children using it reported problems with the positioning of the net and the football goal bars that makes them dangerous to use
- Residents have found that in heavy rain, the path running alongside the court from Farrer to the railway arches is unpassable due to flooding.

Perhaps we need another RLP to remove this new under-water feature...

Postscript:
When a tenant phoned up to complain about the lack of return address, she was asked to give her answers over the phone. She refused to do this since she had recently been asked to do the same thing about a repair that hadn't happened a year after it was reported. She had been sent 24 Satisfaction Slips to fill in but hadn't sent them back because the job hadn't been done. 

This conversation may explain why this week we got another letter apologising for the lack of a return address for the questionnaire (but no Freepost envelope). Perhaps this little bit of cost cutting is just as well since the charge to Leaseholders for Resident Involvement has already gone up 68%...