Greetings Cllr Hardy.One of the conversations I held with officials and Councillors on tours of our damaged pavements was about who exactly are the Councils witnesses? The point of my asking people to come on a visit was for them to become first hand witnesses.Officials are out and about and you have many people doing one job who could easily call in or photograph and send in vans on pavements; skips; builders working across pavements; graffiti; damaged slabs; huge lorries crossing crossovers (I have a photograph of a full cement mixer making a delivery whilst sitting on top of the driveway)…. etc.One of the facts, established on tour, was the direct link between damage and building work. Your street engineer will agree he has known about this for 20+ years. Building control people pop out, planning people pop out, yet are we to assume these people are not qualified to be witnesses?The other Alan from street people, when he came on his visit just before Mary Macleod, asked me for the tour then arranged for the worst slabs to be fixed, so I was unable to show them to her. Going for a walk with street scene Alan was a bit like tracking with Ray Mears as he kept saying this damage is old; this damage is new; this damage was made by a skip; this damage was made by vehicular movement; this damage is made by the leg of a delivery lorry. If this expertise is in the hands of the street engineer examining ‘this is new’ damage in front of a site with building work going on, and in particular a skip or building materials in the driveway, why cannot the street engineer, as the representative of LBH and the representative of H&S for pedestrians and providing a customer service (sorry, Adam Beamish :-) ) approach the builders and require them to tell him who did the damage? We have even discussed the possible use of a small claims court by LBH.Rumour has it that a new site on Northumberland Avenue Isleworth (new skip in the driveway) was visited by a building inspector type official last week (possibly Friday) and he was seen in the front driveway with his back to the skip. What did he do with his first hand 'information', from the site? If he didn't want to be exposed by taking a photo of the skip, possibly upsetting the builders (something the Council appears happy to want neighbours to do) then a run of the mill style photo as a 'part of his job' could have been sent in silently to his colleagues in the pavement dept, as a witness, to support them in their work.Many Councillors have sent in e-mails of complaint after I sent them mail with photographic proof of how the pavements are damaged - and nothing has improved - so how is information from a councillor valued? Cllr Paul Fisher and Cllr Barbara Reid have written many e-mails. All who came on tour did the same.Cllr Andrew Dakers has said it would be interesting to explore where the lines of communication break down, and I would like to see duplication of topics by types of informants explored (for example boundary issues where many people probably end up contacting Councillors about the same topic). I know Cllr Valerie Lamey said she couldn't get anywhere to address damage from occurring during building work as have other Councillors.If we are actually looking at the whole process perhaps you could ask your fellow Councillors to arm themselves with the policy and look out for skips in driveways (there are oodles and oodles of them right across the borough) and to report them in their role of ‘Councillor and valuable source of information’ going in to the Civic Centre so that the scrutiny people can follow their information, through. Perhaps they could copy their e-mails to you and skip scrutiny Alan.I imagine if you wanted a skip you would firstly ring around to find out costs. Skip companies not forking out for the on street license, because they will use the driveway, might have an unfair advantage in the pricing stakes?
Sarah Felstead ● 6210d