Another story which caught my eye this week was about a local free school in Slough having to bus its children to lunch as the intervening road had no safe crossing point.
No! Slough Borough Council can’t alter the traffic light sequence to allow the children time to get across a busy road.
No! Slough Borough Council won’t provide a lollipop person.
No! Slough Borough Council won’t provide a Zebra Crossing.
Yes! The problem is the school’s fault.
What’s betting if the school was one controlled by Slough Borough Council all the above would miraculously become possible and that their refusal to help the school get its pupils safely across the road is more to do with spite and political dogma than anything else.
Another example of Council spite came to light in a report that Wakefield Metropolitan District Council’s hived-off housing department, Wakefield District Housing, was reneging on an undertaking given to tenants of a block of flats.
It would seem that when WDH took over the flats seven years ago they changed the tenancy agreement banning tenants from keeping cats and dogs.
However, an undertaking was apparently given by the then tenancy manager that existing tenants could keep their pets for their lifetime, a sensible and compassionate compromise.
Now however the new Area Manager for WDH, one Joanne Smith, is seeking to enforce the tenancy agreement. Whilst admitting that an undertaking had been previously given she is now adamant that she can’t, or won’t, over-ride the tenancy agreement.
Needless to say, the original minutes recording the compromise seven years ago have been ‘lost’!
How convenient for WDH.
Mrs Smith says she will ‘work sympathetically with residents’ – but not apparently sympathetically enough to abide by a promise freely given seven years ago.
No harm can possibly be done by allowing a seven year old agreement to continue and it seems to me like another example of petty council spite for the sake of it.
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