To be fair to Councillor Bowen, as an ex-LBH officer who worked alongside him for several years, I will testify that he always chases up Officers for responses and action and is fair and reasonable in his outlook and expectation. I imagine on this issue the Council has been deluged by comments and complaints, so it may take somewhat normal than longer to respond to each individual comment.At the same time, there are numerous Councils I can think of (not Hounslow) where the whole way the Council is run centres around Officers 'pandering' to Councillors, because Directors etc. will never dare to actually say to a Councillor "I'm sorry but that isn't possible", and that isn't the way it should be. In many ways my own frustrations dealing with Councils these days is that I find many Council Officers are poor at dealing with the general public, like during telephone calls, site visits (if you ever watch the terrible BBC series 'The Planners are Coming many of the Officers on there come across very poorly) and at committee meetings etc, and I blame this on the ever-increasing culture of general switchboards, increasing use of e-communication etc, which to a considerable extent has created a 'gulf' between Council Officers and the outside world. But this in turn always raises the point that in my opinion the general public wrongly believe/expect Council Officers exist to serve the public, whereas to me that is the role of Elected Councillors, Officers these days are buried under statutory obligations, performance targets etc.
Adam Beamish ● 6429d