29 October - A little more from the Cabinet meeting

After the pot hole row following Daniel Francis MP’s alleged misrepresentation of the facts to Parliament the Cabinet moved on to Data and Artificial Intelligence. The aim is to reduce duplication of effort and achieve less need for residents to repeat themselves every time they contact the Council about an issue. AI will not be allowed to take decisions. Councillor Jeremy Fosten (Labour, Belvedere) voiced concerns but the Leader said everything would be monitored through human intervention and caution would be exercised. The Cabinet decided to adopt the new data strategy.

The Council earned a “significant” sum last year from disposing of its assets and leasing them and this year it will be much the same; around £6 million.

A report on health issues said that maintaining sexual health has become very expensive. Providing contraceptives results in a pay back dividend of about nine times. HIV is thought to be under-diagnosed and STD rates are not good. As has been noted before, the north of the borough fares particularly poorly.

The final 50 minutes of the webcast provided very little information and by itself the above few lines barely warrant a blog; therefore, with the aid of A.N. Other the following has been extracted from the Agenda and other sources.

• The current total overspend is £2·184 million
• The Capital programme is £65·763 million compared to a budget of £68·254 million, an underspend of £2·491 million.
• Adult Social Care is £3·621 million overspent.
• Children’s Services are forecasting an overspend of £1·344 million.
• Education is forecasting an overspend of £0·445 million.
• The Dedicated Schools Grant is forecasting an overspend of £5.943 million.
• Finance and Corporate Services is forecasting an overspend of £0·767 million.
• The Place Directorate is forecasting an underspend of £0·658 million.
• Corporate budgets are forecasting an underspend of £2·890 million.
• The Chief Executive’s Office is forecasting a breakeven position.
• (No one asked the Chief Financial Officer to explain the reasons for the variances.)
• Council employees were given a 3·2% pay rise.
• The newly formed Transformation Team was given a startup budget of £4·8 million. The newly appointed Deputy Director of Transformation Ayesha Hakim Rahman has a salary package of £151,750 and her three assistants are on a combined salary of £188,000. They have yet to be given a financial savings target.
• Reserves are due to fall £5·323 million because they are funding overspends and mask their severity.
• They paid back £1 million of their Public Works Loan Board loans leaving a mere £229·615 million to go.
• BexleyCo’s 2025 Business Plan assumes zero profit and it continues to be baled out by the Council. Their houses are simply not selling due to the difficulty faced by moderate earners in getting mortgages.

 

28 October - The do nothing Council

It is a month since the Community Protection Notice served on the owner of the former Leather Bottle eyesore expired although who that actually is I am no longer sure. I understand that Mr. Singh carved it into three plots which makes serving notices more difficult.

It is not obvious that anyone has complied with the Notice so a resident who lives nearby asked the Council in an FOI what they had done about it. Details of current or recent legal proceedings, enforcement actions, or formal notices issued and copies of correspondence; that sort of thing. Probably Bexley Council is still sitting on its hands. A bit like someone must be when it comes to emptying bins. This one has been full since before the Bottle’s Community Notice expired.

 

27 October - Lucky it is half-term

No time for webcast reviews today because I had to drive to Bromley and back - twice. Just over ten miles each way at half term. How difficult can that be?

In 2009 I thought Andrew Bashford should be sacked for telling me blatant lies about his road designs. How naive I was. I didnְ’t fully appreciate that lying was what Councils do and if individuals are good enough at it, they deserve promotion. Mr. Bashford is now Head of Highways.

I do not know to what extent he is directly responsible for today’s chaos, the utility companies can be a law unto themselves.

My journey started with a long wait at the top of New Road as a constant stream of traffic turned in front of me headed for Abbey Wood station. Brampton Road was closed and the diversionary route via Pickford Lane and Crook Log had a very large hole in it with one-way lights. Not to mention two Yellow Money Boxes.

Penhill Road was partially blocked by six large construction vehicles and a digger while work proceeded on a side road. No lights; drivers had to fend for themselves.

I had forgotten that Sidcup High Street is closed for two weeks from today and the awkwardly angled unnecessary width restrictor in The Green is close to impassable in my six feet plus wide car. I never use it and have seven year old unscraped alloys to prove it. Fortunately I was there just before 8 a.m. and the High Street barriers were not yet in place. I went through unimpeded.

On the return leg, with the High Street closed there were six buses queued at the Eastern end apparently not knowing where to go. There is no way they can get through the ridiculous width restrictor. How do bus drivers remain sane in Bexley?

On the second trip Brampton Road, Crook Log and Penhill Road were still all obstructed as one might expect but I remembered the Sidcup closure and diverted via Station Road. Guess what? There was a big hole in that too and more one-way lights.

The ‘StoryTeller’ lights let through two cars and a bus before I was stopped again. In Bromley borough there were no problems at all. Lucky for them that Bashford’s jurisdiction does not extend South of the A20.

Just to add to the woes there is a notice at the Northern end of Brampton Road to say that it will be closed for four weeks beginning 10th November.

 

26 October - Teresa’s last Cabinet

I initially planned to go to the Public Cabinet meeting last week because it was to be Teresa O’Neill’s last appearance as Chairman although the webcast means the main advantage is better photographs. However my SLR camera is broken and then I got an irresistible offer to be elsewhere. So that settled it. It’s the webcast again.

We heard that the number of complaints closed on time was higher than expected - they changed the rules - the percentage of household waste sent for recycling was up, the number of people in full time employment was up, child drug use treatment is down - is that good? - attendance at Leisure Centres is up and suicides were down. Bexley’s Planning Department has been rated ‘Premium’, by whom was not stated. All good news.

The subject of Building Regulation Control being done by private companies was raised by Councillor Slaughter. She referred to them being both more efficient and cheaper. Cabinet Member Cafer Munir said that Bexley Council does its Building Control work “properly and by the book” which safeguards residents leading to the best possible building quality. From personal experience in Bromley where the Council has washed their hands of Building Control I can confirm that its private contractor was shockingly bad about three years ago.

The finances are not brilliant as you might expect. Blame Social Services. A £2,184 million overspend is forecast which is just a little bit better than it was three months ago. Highways are spending less than forecast, who would have guessed?. Cabinet Member Leaf said that it doesn’t help that our Labour MP gives false information to Parliament about Bexley’s Highways expenditure leading to the Prime Minister saying he might reduce our funding. I immediately suspected it was Daniel Francis because the Thamesmead MP doesn’t seem to do anything, but Councillor Richard Diment confirmed it. He said that Mr. Francis’s comments in Parliament were “outrageous, cavalier and deliberately misleading” (not all in the same sentence) and he has put Bexley’s roads’ maintenance at risk and repeated his comments in a Radio 5 Live interview.

The extract from Hansard which appears alongside is quite obviously misleading and does not reveal that it was the MP who wrote to the News Shopper first. Outrageous seems to be an entirely reasonable response from Richard Diment.

Specifically Daniel Francis has been reporting potholes via FixMyStreet at a rate of around 50 per day and nearly all of them out of office hours causing considerable expense because a technician is sent to inspect every one immediately, out of hours included. Every FixMyStreet report was accompanied by inappropriate political slogans which had to be removed. Only a quarter of the pot holes merited attention and fewer than 5% immediately.

The Chief Executive told the MP that his activities were causing a great deal of unnecessary expense and there were other ways by which he could make his reports. Like within Office Hours for example. Daniel Francis did not comply and instead went to the News Shopper claiming Bexley’s roads were in a worse state than our neighbours. National statistics (The Highways Comparison Report) say they are in an incomparable better state than all of them. At least ten times better than Greenwich for example. It’s obvious to any driver who strays across the border.

The MP ‘fiddled’ the statistics by referring to the sum of invoices actually paid to contractors and not the sum of invoices in the pipeline for work already done. The Cabinet Member said that all the Government roads grant will be spent. In other words the MP is untrustworthy, a cheat and unworthy of his elected position. The Leader said deliberately wasting taxpayers’ money was an “absolute disgrace”.

Richard Diment will write to the Prime Minister to correct the MP’s treachery towards the borough.

Interesting stuff. Check for yourself; someone is misleading us and it probably isn’t Richard Diment.

Cabinet Member Caroline Newton said that Daniel Francis MP took a similar unhelpful position on SEND issues.

Labour Councillor for Erith Chris Ball raised the issue of the totally inadequate bus stops outside Abbey Wood station where the shelters are ineffective [and in the case of Stop D not even close to the Stop]. Do we have any money to improve things? He pointed out that the pot hole spend seems to be running behind schedule on a month by month basis but did not attempt to justify the MP’s misinformation. The Leader said the money came through late and therefore a month by month comparison is flawed.

Interestingly the Leader said that the bus stop opposite Abbey Wood station is the only one in the borough that belongs to the Council and that is one reason for such a major stop not having a departure board. The reason for the ownership situation is lost in time but is being discussed with TfL.

Here is Bexley Council’s response to the Prime Minister’s threat to withdraw road maintenance funding.


Well done David!

 

24 October - Method in their madness? But at a high price

Seven years ago, Bexley Council bought the tiny bungalow at 63 Belvedere Road for a staggering £638,000. At the time the next most expensive property in Belvedere Road was only £400k. The Council must have been desperate to get their hands on it and a canny owner seems to have held them to ransom.

BiB speculated that it would become part of the entrance to a Burr Farm development and now it is all coming true. 63 Belvedere Road has been boarded up in preparation for 71 new houses, half of them two bedroom. 50% three bedroom and the remainder four bedroom. It will be BexleyCo’s second significant development in their eight years of existence.

63 for 63 grand!

Index to Burr Farm blogs.

 

23 October - Maladministration?

Do you know anything about pension funds? No me neither but someone who claims to have some knowledge suggested I dig into Bexley Council’s arrangements. He says that pension fund administration should generally cost around 0·1% of the fund managed. I only have his word for it but a bit of research suggests it is in the right ball park for large pension funds.

Bexley’s Pension Fund currently stands at £1,030,000,000, a little over a billion. That is a lot of Council Tax. If 0·1% is a reasonable fee that comes to a nice round million, give or take.

What are they actually shelling out? Not absolutely sure. They have a contract to manage the fund, 13 of them by the looks of things currently costing us £7,364,859·67 in fees but does that mean anything? Maybe not. The actual amount spent appears to be £11,069,000. 1·07% or ten times the industry norm. WTF! That’s about four and a half thousand Band D Council Tax payments on looking after fat cats.

You can discover most of the figures for yourself by Googling Bexley Council Contracts Register. Some came from a FOI. If I have got anything wrong Bexley Council will perhaps get back to me, but they never have in the past 16 years.

 

20 October (Part 2) - History repeats itself

A Councillor who I described as glamorous a very long time ago has done it again. No, not sent me a fifth demand that I sign a gagging order to keep certain documents away from prying eyes but brought disrepute on a Council or her party. The newspaper Kent Online has spilled some Reform UK beans. No longer glamorous the Councillor’s luck seems to have run out. She “can’t believe they’ve done this to me. I have done nothing wrong - I’ve been in tears all morning. I am so upset” and says she will be taking legal advice. She is not short of it. I think I have heard from seven different solicitors over the years all intent on giving me as much grief as possible. Just like she did the innocents falsely accused of theft and arrested.

I have no evidence that the unmentionable Councillor has done anything wrong in Maidstone (Reform say they have it) just as there wasn’t any evidence in Bexley almost exactly ten years ago, however she must be highly skilled in annoying all her colleagues. I have some choice comments from Councillors in Bexley.

A message from a journalist friend seems to support that view.

I think she is likely toast, widely despised, because this is just the tip of an iceberg and I am expecting more to come.

She has already been removed from the Old Bexley and Sidcup chair and has been trying to undermine the party. [Someone else showed me the email in which she attacked well known Reform figures.]

This is the final nail in her chipboard coffin.

Video statement.

How do you rate the chances of an eighth solicitor being in touch soon?

 

20 October (Part 1) - The Finance Scrutiny meeting. Complaints officially down but maybe they are not

Labour Leader Stefano Borella kicked off proceedings with a question about the Customer Experience Strategy. “What sort of savings are we expecting to make?” Cabinet Member David Leaf said “that was difficult to quantify in terms of pounds, shillings and pence” but there would be performance improvements. Councillor Borella noted that only 5% of survey respondents were black compared to 12% of Bexley’s population.

Councillor Howard Jackson (Conservative, Barnehurst) was pleased to see that overall complaint numbers are going down. Maybe that has something to do with @tonyofsidcup being advised that some of his complaints would not be recorded as complaints. How common is that? Councillor Jackson asked what might be driving the reduction and the answer came close to confirming @tony’s experience. The new procedure is that if the initial complaint can be resolved within two days it is not sent forward to the responsible team for a more lengthy investigation. Some complaints are judged to be service requests and are not included in complaint statistics. Additionally the Complaints section of the website has been redesigned so that some are redirected to the Reporting section. From next April the two day period allowed to acknowledge a complaint will be extended to five days. “Complaints that do not need to go through the full process, won’t.”

The meeting moved from the Experience Strategy to the People Strategy and the first comment came from Councillor Cheryl Bacon (Conservative, Sidcup) and it was about staff absences. She was told that the numbers had not dropped but they were never particularly high when compared to other boroughs but stress and anxiety was a big contributor to the numbers. All managers are to be given mental health awareness training. It was not clear how many had attended the suicide prevention programme.

Councillor Larry Ferguson (Labour, Thamesmead East) asked for the numbers relating to staff bullying and similar. He was informed that the Directorate that scored particularly badly (Adults’ Social Services) in the previous survey had received special attention but few of the staff in it came forward this time.

David Leaf gave his Cabinet Member update which he uncharacteristically said would be a short one. Not unreasonably he warned of the likely adverse impact of another Labour Government budget on 26th November and he is already hampered by the lack of information on the Household Support Fund which is to be renamed the Household Resilience Fund. With a tribute to Margaret Thatcher born one hundred years ago, that was about it from the usually voluble David. Councillor Borella said he hated what she did but was thankful that she spurred his interest in politics. He speculated that by November, Councillor Leaf would be Leader of the Council and if so would he continue to look after Finance. Answer came there none.

 

18 October - More on the Transport meeting

A review of the Transport Users’ meeting recording has revealed a few items of interest not reported yesterday.

Railways
• Contrary to what was said three months ago when it was announced that the Bexley station subway passage would close permanently on 6th September, a different Southeastern representative said there are no current plans for closure.
Police
• The Greenwich, Lewisham, Bexley Borough Command unit will cease to exist from next January however this comment was probably intended to cover only the Transport command; the audio quality is very poor.)
• Councillor Richard Diment had been out with the Community Road Watch Team and observed nine speeding offences in Perry Street, Crayford out of nearly 1,000 vehicles in less than an hour. None were seen in Hurst Road, Sidcup over 45 minutes.
TfL matters
• All the worst performing bus routes (428, 492, 229) are run by Arriva out of their Dartford garage and have been rewarded by TfL with a new seven year contract and the icing on the cake is that they are going to operate the 96 too. (Bluewater to Woolwich).
• Every route through Bexley apart from the 89 is now operated by electric vehicles or shortly will be.
TfL reported that its half million pound electric buses did not cope with the recent hot weather very well. (This is a complete reversal of what is to be expected.)
Parking
• Photographs alone are insufficient for a PCN. The offence must be seen by a CEO.
• All schools opening and closing at about the same time poses an enforcement problem. There has to be a rota system for covering them all.
• Blue badge holders abuse their privileges. They park on double yellow lines where it is not safe to do so. The associated image is of a Blue Badge holder who is content to force traffic on to the wrong side of the road at a junction rather than engage his/her brain and move just a few yards further along. The parking manager said that enforcement would require a judgment to be made and implied that the average CEO is not up to the job. For them offences must be black and white.
• Parking across a private drive with dropped kerb will not be enforced unless the householder complains.
• The Council has no powers to remove vehicles that have attracted many PCNs while not being moved but may employ bailiffs.
• CEOs do not generally stay in their jobs very long. “It is not a very nice job.”
(Note: My recorder made a much better job of picking up the Parking Manager’s voice than my own ears did. Maybe I was sitting in a null spot.)
Highways issues
• If the Bexleyheath/Erith cycle route ever comes to fruition it will be funded by TfL.
• About 70 pavement EV chargers are being provided by Trojan Energy to add to the 100 lamp post mounted units installed last year. The Trojan sockets require an adapter between the footpath mounted sockets and the owner’s cable. A couple of hundred more are possible.
• The EV chargers abandoned by BP Pulse may be restored in a multi-borough rescue operation. Negotiations are difficult.
• The planned Bexley Road zebra crossing has been delayed by Thames Water activities.
• Sidcup High Street will be resurfaced in December which should help the Christmas trade enormously.
• Councillor Hinkley remarked on the number of road junction markings which have faded or entirely disappeared. The Highways Manager waffled somewhat about which ones might represent a safety hazard but there was no promise that they will be fixed any time soon.

 

17 October - Interim Transport meeting report

I dragged myself to the Transport Users’ meeting last night using an SL3 which thanks to the congestion engineered into Bexley’s roads delivered me to Room G08 with only a couple of minutes to spare. It was pleasing to note that a large number of people decamped the electric Superloop at Lion Road proving that Councillor Davey’s mission to have it miss a stop not in his ward is the nonsense that it always was.

Usually it is the Police who do not show up at Transport meetings but this time it was the TfL representative; so no news about buses held up by constant Thames Water works; speaking of which they are going to dig up Station Road, Sidcup, all the way through to Chislehurst Road to renew a leaky main. 18 months of disruption, one-way working and possible closures. When they have finished some time in 2027 they have another four or five years of Bexley carnage planned. The SL3 route is jinxed.

The report from Southeastern trains is usually the highlight of the show but this time they had little to report and Network Rail said nothing. The Autumn timetable reinstates stops at Falconwood and the ‘rounder’ trains that link the south of the borough with the Elizabeth line at Abbey Wood is not well enough used in the afternoon to justify more services.

Cabinet Member Diment said that the new lift at Bexley station is not proving to be very reliable. I think Network Rail used Stannah again as they did at Abbey Wood (and Sainsbury’s). Do these people never learn?

A Police Inspector was due to address the Committee but she baled out and threw a hapless substitute into the deep end. With no time to prepare and speaking from a noisy office he was not easy to hear and could not answer all the Councillor’s questions.

I learned that there had been a bit of a teenage riot on Bexleyheath Broadway earlier in the day - what’s new? - and that there were only 20 Neighbourhood coppers across Greenwich, Lewisham and Bexley combined. As Councillor June Slaughter remarked, it is difficult to get information out of the police. Once again it was a less than impressive performance by the Metropolitan Police which is pretty much the norm. After the unfortunate policeman had gone the mutterings from the Committee indicated that their opinion of it was pretty much the same as mine.

Despite the absence of the TfL rep. we did learn from the Agenda that they are not impressed with Councillor Davey’s request for an extra SL3 stop in his West Heath ward or by the campaign for a detour to Bexley station. The present arrangement of Bexley Library to Sidcup Station non-stop allows for a multitude of routes being used to dodge as much of the traffic congestion that the Highway’s Department likes to create, as possible.

All the SL3 bus questions received the same answer. When will Bexley Council recognise that the SL3 is supposed to be an Express route?

TfL also reported that bus journeys in Bexley continue to run slower year by year which they attempt to counter by turning buses early. Once again Councillor Davey was not at all happy about that because destinations are not served. Twice recently I have waited for an SL3 at Lion Road - sorry John - and found two arriving at once, one to Thamesmead and the other to Abbey Wood. At peak hours with plenty of passengers, that does not seem to be unreasonable to me.

I had hoped that Councillor Hinkley would have something to say about the new AW1 CPZ as she indicated she would at the Places meeting but she did not. All we learned about CPZs is that the West Heath scheme will likely start in December.

The Parking Manager told us about the operation of her department which was probably quite interesting but despite her sitting only six feet from me I heard barely a word of it. (The Councillors sitting furthest from me were easy enough to hear.) The first few words of each statement were audible but her voice immediately dropped to a whisper delivered far too quickly. There was a slide presentation which looked to be a good one although as a follower of such things I don’t think I learned anything new. As you might expect, parents and grandparents delivering legless children to school, park reasonably when a CEO is present and cause chaos when they are not. Some get to be very aggressive to the extent that school teachers on gate patrol are told not to get involved with them.

Another thing I learned is that procedural errors by CEOs leading to penalty cancellations run at no more than 1%.

There was a brief discussion on negotiations with TfL over a Bexleyheath to Erith cycle route. Councillor Davey described it as a nightmare. He is not always wrong.

Note: This is an interim report pending finding time to review the recording which due to the acoustics in the corner of G08 may not be a lot of help.

 

14 October - Saint George banished from his horse

A small number of readers have complained about Bexley Council removing the flags from the Cob and Fish roundabouts. The Council says that they caused “a distraction, impeding visibility or leading to posts or other material falling on the carriageway. These put road users in cars, HGVs and other vehicles, on bikes or on foot at greater risk of collision or injury”.

The bit about flags falling into the road is of course the sort of nonsense that one has come to expect from low IQ Council officials but I am inclined to agree about the flags being a distraction. Going to Lidl and Toolstation on Clydesdale Way took me past the Cob several times recently and whilst I would have liked to have admired the flags I was unable to because that roundabout is far too dangerous already and demands one’s eyes to be firmly on the road. In another indictment of Bexley Council’s lack of road planning skills, the Fish roundabout in Erith is just as bad.

If you can be bothered to read Bexley Council’s statement (extract below) you will find that they go on to issue threats against anyone planning on replacing the flags. They will introduce speed limits and the like. If they are so worried about distractions they should remove the bloody horse!

Bexley Council needs to go. Very little they do indicates the level of intellect needed to run a Council, Highways being the most obvious example.

 

13 October - It’s not fair

Not someone I have heard of before but “David Green runs the Supervote Project, a small campaign which seeks to reform the voting system in the UK. While the Reform movement tends to concentrate on voting reform for elections to the House of Commons, the Supervote Project focuses on local council elections in the belief that untold damage is being done to the fabric of our democracy at the grassroots by the First-past-the-post voting system.” [Quotation from Press Release.]

Counterintuitively, to me, 20th puts Bexley in a fairer position than 19 other London boroughs.  
The report (Press Release) in full is available here (PDF) or by clicking the image above.

The News Shopper’s readers would however appear to have gone entirely nuts. Two Tier Kier scores 45% of the vote.

 

12 October - Meetings resume

Apologies for the break but I am somewhat overwhelmed with domestic and personal matters that threaten to bring Bonkers to a halt; but here we are with the latest Places Scrutiny meeting report, thankfully not an especially long one, you could call it a rather weedy one.

The charity Keep Britain Tidy has reported that Bexley has become significantly cleaner than it was a year ago. Littering, fly posting, graffiti and fly tipping and weeds all much reduced. Except for graffiti, in the region of three times better.

Councillor Diment said Bexley has far more bins littering it streets than ever before. One at every bus stop and that is one reason for Bexley looking cleaner.

Weeding is not easy due to car parking, some of it long term, and it is likely that before long, parking suspensions will be put in place before weed spraying and street cleaning days. Councillor June Slaughter said weed killing seemed to be not as effective as it used to be and the Council officer said they had stopped using glyphosate in favour of an alternative which is about 40% less effective. An electric weed killing machine is being investigated.

Councillors John Davey and Sally Hinkley both complained about street notices that are never taken down and knew of some still in place ten years after being posted. Is it ok if she removed them once their sell-by date is expired she asked? A Council officer said that new notices are due to have an expiry date on them and people will be encouraged to remove them once the date has passed. As the link indicates, that is nothing new.

Councillor Philip Read encouraged people to remove any litter that lies outside their own home. Why would anyone not do that? There is of course a litter pickers scheme detailed on the Council’s website. Councillor Read said he was thinking of the area immediately outside one’s own home. “It is just common sense” and it is. I do it but mostly on Friday after the bin men drop it.

Overall, the Country Style managers who were at the Scrutiny meeting seemed to be more than happy with their performance and the improvements made since the days of Serco. My experience does not lead me to seriously disagree but for a contrary view you might care to read today’s Maggot Sandwich.

 

5 October - The SidcupTStoryTeller. More bad news

For readers interested in Sidcup’s StoryTeller cinema, which is presumably not many or Bexley Council would not have had to subsidise it with a five figure sum each month, a little more information has come to light since the subject was featured here last weekend.

The London Centric website has had a little more to say (third item on their list) about the cinema owner Preston Benson. He is blaming constant Council interventions on his difficulties although it is Southwark that is singled out for special mention rather than Bexley, but bureaucrats will nearly always interfere with private enterprise given the chance. On the other hand maybe Bexley Council did not poke their noses into the Really Local Group’s affairs as much as they should before getting into bed with an almost unknown outfit offering what turned out to be Fool’s Gold.

In more bad news, the employment practices at the StoryTeller’s sister screen known as Peckham Levels (Southwark) were condemned by a judge and revealed by The Bureau of Investigative Journalism. (Click to find it on the web.)

The owner provided “inconsistent testimony” but Bexley Council continues to act as if it still has every confidence in him.

 

1 October (Part 2) - contact@

To combat spam messages the email address reply@bexley-is-bonkers.co.uk has been changed to contact@bib etc.

 

1 October (Part 1) - The digital divide

I think I speak for all my neighbours when I say the new CPZ has transformed the area. It is so quiet and peaceful, the unexpected bonus is not the free access unencumbered by inconsiderate commuters, but the lack of noise from vehicles going up and down the roads looking for parking spaces and turning around right outside my house.

But not everyone is happy, not those who have no off-street parking spaces such as those in Elstree Gardens. One sent me an email describing the problems brought about by an incompetent and unthinking Council.

My brother lives within the new CPZ and he tried to get hold of some scratch cards for visitors (mainly me). He does not have a Council account and doesn’t manage online stuff very well at all. So he tried to phone the Council to see if he could buy some.

Two attempts resulted in nothing but being shuttled around. He was told he could only apply via his online account which he doesn’t have and which is a little beyond his IT skill levels. Or he could go to a Council ‘HUB’ for them. He didn’t know what that was and neither do I.

I looked at the Council’s website to see if I could help but people living outside the borough, like me, are not allowed to apply for visitor’s permits.

In the end I emailed and managed to get a form sent out to my brother which allowed him to apply by post and pay by cheque.

I’ve not seen the form but he said it was far too confusing and didn’t even tell him how much to pay. So he gave up.

We have asked a neighbour if I can park on her drive when I visit. It should have been so much easier.

On a related note, I was driving along Rochester Way in Blackfen a few Saturdays ago. There were no cars parked there because that is now a controlled area. But it puzzled me. I used to see many families park up and go for a walk in the woods during weekends. But it would seem that Bexley Council has put paid to that.

Why isn’t the parking restriction 10 till 12 Monday to Friday? This would stop the commuters from parking there for the day and free up the area for locals. Just like the new area round you and my brother. But I guess that requires some intelligence. It’s a sad old state of affairs.

The 26 bay free car parking in Abbey Road had just four cars in it when I passed by this morning. There are no adjacent houses and there is no logical reason to restrict parking there except that, thanks to the idiot who designed it way back in 2009, the road is too narrow for buses to pass each other; but that problem has not been solved by the four hour restriction.