So long for now

Regular readers will have noticed that we've not been posting anywhere nearly as regularly as we used to. We feel bad about this, we really do want to provide an outlet for stories and information about Greenwich Council, but we've become more and more busy with our own lives and so we've decided to take a break from this blog.

When we set this blog up in May 2006 we did so with the aim of cutting though the spin coming out of Greenwich Council, helping to keep the Council on its toes and offering the long suffering residents of Greenwich a small platform to air their views though the comments section. We hope that we have in some way been able to do this, over the last 2 and a bit years we have had a number of small successes, some of the highlights have been;

• AEG Casino bid
• the famed Greenwich Congestion Charge
• the educational failure of Greenwich
• Greenwich Council's love of spin
• talking Rubbish
  
• The Blackwall Tunnel
• Thamesmead's troubles
  
• the conduct and professionalism of various councillors and other elected officials
• down at the Ferrier
  

We will leave this blog up for anyone looking for information and we do ask that you keep it in your RSS aggregator and check back from time to time as you never know we might find an opportunity to start it up again! Also if you do find anything out about Greenwich Council or its elected officials that you really think needs to be made public then do email us as we will keep an eye on the inbox.

Finally a big thank you to all those people who have emailed us views and tip offs and also to all our commentors, this site simply would not have been what it was without you.

We hope you enjoyed reading the site.

Greenwich Watch

Councillor Kanta Patel R.I.P

Councillor Kanta Patel has passed away last week after being ill for some time. She had served on Greenwich Council for 21 years.
She was a Councillor for the Plumstead ward along with Councillors Cornforth and Jawaid.
Our respects to her family and friends.

The official council tribute can be found here.

Greenwich Council jumping the gun

Looks like Greenwich Council have been caught jumping the gun again. In the Audit Commissions' Report of the repairs and inspection services it looks like Greenwich Council has been threating legal action before it should. This way it gets what it wants from people.

Paragraph 95

The gas servicing programme is not sufficiently managed. The programme is based on a geographical basis, with contractors targeting properties in a given area at a given time. While this generally ensures that contact is sought with tenants before the CP12 expires, it also means that on some occasions the Council is seeking access shortly after the issue date of a CP12. In one case we found that despite the CP12 being issued in February 2007 the tenant had received numerous access letters, including a legal enforcement letter by October 2007. Not only does this mean that the Council are threatening legal action before the expiry of the CP12, but the necessity for tenants to arrange access so soon after the completion of a CP12 means more inconvenience for the tenant. This is not a customer focused approach and causes preventable inconvenience to tenants.

- A CP12 is the documentation provided to the tenant and retained by the landlord confirming the completion of the annual gas servicing check

This also shows that the council is making its tenants complete a second CP12 right after one has already been completed. We've posted before about Greenwich Council's treatment of tenants but this takes a different approach to it all.