1 July (Part 2) - The downward spiral
There’s only going to be four webcast Council meetings in July but it is pleasing to see
that the Transport Users’ meeting will be one of them. That is an improvement on
pre-Covid days when Transport was not webcast.
Webcasting of meetings is one of the few Council related things that is an
improved service over the past half dozen years - a somewhat niche positive in an ocean of negatives.
Prompted by a reader’s comment I have been thinking of what has got better under Conservative rule and what has
not. The conclusion can only be that their record is abysmal.
If one excludes things paid for by someone else like Lesnes Abbey (Heritage
Lottery Fund), the Splashpark (Cory Environmental) and town centre
wi-fi (does anyone use it?) very little has been achieved.
Library Services are poorer, museums are
mothballed (instead of being sent to Bromley) and
Hall Place is a mismanaged mess.
Grass maintenance which was down to nine cuts a year in 2016 was found to be
totally inadequate and raised to ten.
It used to be twelve.
Not one road scheme has resulted in improved traffic flow. Gravel Hill/Watling Street, Trinity Place and Harrow Manorway are
the products of a troubled or possibly vindictive mind. Harrow Manorway is the route to the Crossrail
station at Abbey Wood but has seen its capacity halved and somehow manages to
have 20, 30 and 40 m.p.h. sections and finally 50 at the Eastern Avenue roundabout all within the space of 200 metres.
Parking charges have rocketed in price (30% this year alone) and free periods have gone. Ten years ago
Car Parks were free after 6 p.m. and on Sundays but on 6th June 2011 all that went.
Despite the
announcement made then there are exceptions which remain free after six
including the Bexleyheath Cinema Car Park for contractual reasons. A couple are
free on Sundays too but the almost universal borough wide Monday to Saturday 8 till 6 rule has long gone.
Five years ago a resident could buy an annual season ticket in my nearest car
park for £684 and now it is £1,734. The resident rate has been restricted to those who
work in the borough too. London commuters have been successfully stuffed!
Pest Control Services were always
the
most expensive in London but that problem was fixed by abandoning the service completely.
The Council planned to
sell off 27 parks and open spaces and whilst some were reprieved Old Farm
Park, Wilde Road and West Street residents have all suffered at the hands of
BexleyCo which has yet to put a penny back into Bexley’s coffers.
The Danson Park Festival is no more.
So too is
the William Morris Fountain on Broadway.
Active monitoring of
the
CCTV system has been abandoned.
Refuse services are now less frequent than ten years ago and more costly. Garden
waste removal has gone from free to £27 (discounted rate) to £50 (discounted rate) in
only five years. In a further degradation of service the useful Guide to
Services has gone from this in 2020 to
the almost useless in 2021.
Bexley Council no longer provides a collection timetable.
For individual residents the availability of recycling centres has been halved
because someone at Bexley Council was staring into space when statistics were
timetabled at school. (The odd/even number plate farce.)
Council Tax has
gone up by 25% in five years and in
eleven years of Conservative
Government Bexley has still not managed to negotiate fairness into the grant allocation. Everywhere one looks there is failure.
School crossing patrols are
reduced from 38 to eleven and Headteachers are having to do their job.
Bexley Council claims that reducing to only 45 Councillors instead of 63 is an
improvement. No it isn’t; the per capita workload has massively increased which
cannot have improved the service offered to residents.
Bexley’s Conservative Council has done absolutely nothing to improve the quality
of life in the borough has it? Quite the reverse.