Richard Baum

Today has been hugely dull. Great gusts of tedium have blown themselves around me as I trudged from meeting to meeting at work. And because I am left handed and was at one point using a flip-chart marker, an untoward smudging incident occurred and now I have ink on my fingers and I look like an errant schoolboy.

One of the necessary evils of my job as a Councillor is to chase up Council Officers who haven’t responded to my emails. I don’t know if it is a pathological thing with some of them, or whether the world wide web doesn’t function in the small quadrant of land between the Town Hall and my house, but whatever the reason I am frequently ignored. If this is how they treat me, God only knows how they treat people without the luxury of a public mandate.

Today’s chasings-up include a month-old request for a reply to a letter regarding Phillips Park. Some local people want help planting out some flowers there, but the response so far from the Council has been nil. You’d think they’d welcome the help, but I don’t know what they think because they haven’t bothered to reply to me.

There is also the matter of a “Keep Clear” box, desperately needed for residents of The Radius who can’t get in or out of their car park because of jams outside. This was requested in April, promised three weeks ago, and still hasn’t been painted. I don’t know how long it took to paint the roof of the Sistene Chapel, but this appears to be a job on a similar scale.

The third issue relates to the green ooze on Woodward Road, which I have written on here about before and which still shows no signs of being removed. Apparently it may have something to do with a collapsed drain, which is a relief because I thought at one point it marked the start of an alien invasion. But regardless of the exact cause, it isn’t pleasant and it’s still there. So, two months on, and five emails down the line, I have asked again today, in a tone probably most reminiscent of a school master dealing with someone who hasn’t done their homework.

And finally there is a vulnerable old man who asked me to have the kerb outside his flats dropped if possible, to allow him to enter and exit his own home without jolting him out of his wheelchair or requiring a detour to the end of the street. Obviously my pavement-lowering skills aren’t top-notch, but I know a man who can (The Clerk of Works, Bury MBC). Unfortunately he too ignores me, and so I have asked again for his help today. It’s OK though, I am sure this poor old man bouncing along the road in his wheelchair doesn’t mind that the man paid to serve him is too rude to do his job.

The shoddy response times to requests for service from the Council are nothing short of maddening. The Council has a customer service charter which states that emails must be answered within 24 hours, and responded to fully within 10 working days. I have kept an informal record for the past couple of months, and this standard is not met well over half the time. And I am a Councillor, so am probably treated better than most. And there’s not much I can do about it either. I have raised it in Council, I have spoken to people and emailed them time and time again. And nothing changes. We are still having phone calls, emails and even face to face chats ignored. We may be opposition back benchers but we are still elected members with people counting on us to get things answered.

The poor people who come to me for help must wonder why I can’t act quicker, and honestly so do I. I am not asking for the impossible. I don’t want a bypass built past somebody’s back garden in a fortnight. I want simple things, or quite often just any kind of response at all so that the resident doesn’t feel like he’s being ignored. Often a reasoned “no” is quite sufficient. But I am not even getting that.

It’s frustrating. Almost as frustrating, in fact, as trying to scrub permanent marker off my fingers. And let me tell you from bitter experience in the toilet at work today - that is VERY frustrating. 

Rick