I don't believe it

I don't believe it, in January 2009 I took lots of photos of the state of our street furniture, as it's called. Thats lamp posts signage and seats etc. I did this because I thought they were in a mess and needed a lick of paint. Should be straight forward I thought, just bring it to the attention of the appropriate department and it would get sorted. How wrong can you be!

I met with a guy from Capita, who is the agency that works for Cumbria county council and is charged with doing this stuff. He had a look and agreed that it should be done, and on checking he found that there was money to do the work. Brilliant.

Nothing happened.!

Months later after I met him casualy on a night out in Kendal. He tells me that he has asked Amey Mouchel to carry out the work but because their painter has a hip problem they can't do the job right now and wil have to wait till he's better.

Why not use another painter?

Months go by, and I ask the town clerk to once again prod Capita into action, surely the painter is better by now.

After some frustrating exchange of emails we connect with Nick Raymond who is Mr big in the council officers dept. He will chase this up as this wait is unacceptable.

Great!!!!

The next thing we hear, from mr Raymond is that the contractors, is that Amey Mouchele or an outside contractor have told him that unless they can close the road/roads then they can't carry out the work. We are now into June.

Honestly, this is the way that your local County council works. It outsources work to Capita, who contract it out to Amey Mouchel, who put it out to another contractor, who can only do the work on Sunday, so they can close the road, at an inflated price. That price is too high for Capita, and so the job is put on hold.

Last thing we heard was that until the highways agency has enough work in the streets of Ulverston to justify closing the road the painting of the lamp posts will not be done.

As far as I can see we only need to paint the first six to eight feet of the posts, all this needs is a small ladder. They don't need to close the road to do this. But this is how it goes, and this is just symtomatic of why nothing, or very little gets done because there is no common sense being applied by our officers. Why not just paint the bottoms and leave the tops, which don't need painting.

I am a loss to understand the logic, well there's no logic, just beurocratic nonsense.

I think it's time to take back our town, ditch the quagmire of County and District councils and their armslength agencies. Lets buy some paint, a few brushes, and lets go and paint the posts ourselves.

Who's up for a paint party, one Sunday, soon.

Look forward to hearing from you