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Good news! Today, they came and not only emptied the reycycling bins, but they cleaned up the site as well! We suspect that the Environment and Ecology Forum Meeting yesterday had a part to play in today's action!
Hopefully we will not need to raise the matter again as the contractor will abide by the specification!
The caretaker today found that someone had tried to force their way into the laundry, which need an electronic key for access. It appeared that there was no internal damage done - like forcing the cashboxes on the machines.
No one really know whether or not the "criminals" gained access. We have a video camera in the laundry - the camera is hooked into a special video recorder. So we are currently going through the tape to see if there was someone up to no good on the tape.
The TCC purchased the camera and VCR a few years ago as the laundry was always being broken into and the machines were being "robbed" of the money!
Though the amount of cash nicked was not very much, the cost of repairs was very high. The inital cost of about £1,000 was a wise investment as today there is hardly any "incidents" - the one today was the first since well before last Christmas!
There was inital worries among officers in the housing department about video surveillance. Also a number of other tenants groups had concerns. But we consulted the residents and not one person obected to having a video camera "spying" on them in the estate laundry!
Everyone is now happy and other areas are looking at having similar video cameras where their is excessive damage to housing department property (which cost the tenants money to have repaired).
Now to weeds, and the saga of the alleged spraying of them! We use the word "alleged" for good reason ...
The order was placed by the Westgate Housing Office for weedkiller treatment to be sprayed onto the weeds. The work was said to have been done by the contractor.
When we queried this at Tenants' Forums a week ago, it was confirmed that the weeds had been sprayed, but that the temperature was not right for the weedkiller to work!
While this could well be true, we suspect that the excuse was out of the well-known British Rail Excuse Book - remember the wrong sort of leaves, or was it snow?
When we photographed the untidy recycling centre, we also took photos of the weeds so that the film could be used up.
To our "untrained" eyes, it does not look as though thes weeds have seen any weedkiller on them!
We do, of course, appreciate that the City Council does have a strict policy on what type of weedkiller can be used - the powerful liquid is a total "no-no" here, and rightly so.
But weeds should never be allowed to grow unchecked like this! The weather - the rain and the warmth - is a factor, but it cannot be blamed!
There used to be two caretakers on this estate and it was once a caretaking duty to control the weeds. But now that the cartetaking staff has been reduced by 50% (the amount of extra rent we pay specifically for caretaking has never been reuded proportionally!) it was agreed that weed clearance would be something that the housing department ordered seperately to the ground maintenence.
Give housing department their due, the order was placed at the end of April and the the weed sparying is supposed to have been done by the contractor (which contractor we do not know, but we do have a suspicion!) in May.
There were two meetings to go to today. One a regular Tenants Forum Working Party was attended by our treasurer, Phil Mayo. The other was an informal meeting of tenants in the Midlands to chew over the many facets of the "Choices" debate. For those wondering what the "Choices" debate is, it's about the choice that has to be made by tenants in the future on the futurer of "council housing" in their District Council.
Should the housing stock remain in the ownership of the council, be "sold off" to a "social landlord" of one form or another or leased to a company who would "bankroll" the modernisations that are desperately needed ... or even managed by a TMO - a choice that the councillors have already expressed an opinion on. Click here for our report to the Department of Environment, Transport and the Regions of the failure of our Tenant Management Organisation (TMO).
It was a constructive meeting and the inital reaction of the chairman, Andrew Harley, was that the TCC should host a similar meeting of tenant groups in Gloucester where thoughts and interpretations picked up could all be chewed over to the benefit of all.
There are pros and cons for any of the dozen or so different "choices". The feeling is that we have got to sift through them and come up with, ideally, two alternatives to put to ALL tenants.
Gloucester is, of course, well-known for the "sell off" plans that the council had at the end of the 1980s. The plan, which is said to have had the initial backing of the three political parties, was scuppered by a campaign mounted by some tenants against the plans. It even got onto live television (Central)!
We can sense another "no prisoners to be taken" battle for the simple reason that politicians, especially at local level seem to quickly forget!
Just a quick reminder that we DO know about the problems with the guest book. The problem is being worked on, but we suspect that the snag is at TenZero, the company that provides the guestbook at no cost to us. Some of you are Emailing us instead - and thanks for the comments.