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We rumbled a new way of creating extra work by a contractor today!
Gloucester City Services are on the estate replacing all the broken paving slabs on the walkways. The fact that the new slabs do not match the surrounding ones is neither here or there! But we are told that "they don't make them is that shade anymore".
( Perhaps a trip to a local DIY store or garden centre might for research purposes might be an idea following on from the "building regulations" saga reported last week!)
The two workmen that arrived today to replace the slabs near Clapham Court had a small lorry that contained the slabs, sand etc.
Did they park the lorry in the street or even the Clapham Court car park? Of course not!!!
The drove through the car park, up a kerb and onto a paved area, then drove about 20 yards across the paved area and parked up, the lorry being parked up on paving slabs for most of the day.
All contracts between the Housing Department and have clauses in them that say that contractors must not park vehicles on paved areas. But then Gloucester City Services cannot have a contract as that would mean the City Council has a "contract" with itself!
Presumably the "parking clauses" put into all contracts by Housing, which was at the insistance of tenants groups, does not apply to "service level agreements" with Gloucester City Services!
Anyway, we think it is a nice way of creating more work as the paving slabs - nor the base underneath them - are designed to take the weight of vehicles, expecially lorries!
Our Housing Office was informed this afternoon and we were promised that Gloucester City Services would be rapped on the knuckles!
It appears the the entrance door to 11-20 Sherborne Street has been fixed. We checked to door at lunchtime and the entry mechanism was working, and it was closing properly.
More importantly, the residents have not been complaining today. So we are taking this as a case of "no news is good news".
We have seven seperate Neighbourhood Watch groups on the estate. At the suggestion of the Police, we split of estate-wide group into seven. They said that "small was beautiful", honestly!
We went to the annual general meeting of the Gloucester District Neighbourhood Watch Association tonight. The paperwork said it was at 7.30 pm on Tuesday June 8 in the Council Chamber of the Shire Hall in Westgate Street.
We arrived at the Shire Hall in Westgate Street at about 7.25 pm to find the place firmly locked up! Hung around for half an hour, but no sign of life at all!
It was thirsty work, so retired to the New Inn in Northgate Street (an old coaching house where the stage coaches used in the days centuries before Mr. Souter's "Stagecoach" buses!
It was all in the interests of research, of course. Prices are normal pub prices.
If you are not from Gloucester and are visiting, the New Inn is also a hotel .. and it has character, it has been there sine about 1450. It's got to be one of the "quaint hotels of England" - definately not your modern "if it's Tuesday, it must be Brussels" sort of hotel.
The local newspaper, the Citizen, published an article on this diary in last night's edition. Fame at last, or should that be infamy?