Richard Baum

A group of residents on Ruskin Road and St Ann’s Gardens have been in touch with all three St Mary’s Councillors. The ends of their gardens were once a public footpath, but 70 years ago the land was given over to the occupants of the time to cultivate for vegetables to help the war effort. The land was never formally re-claimed, and now the Council have woken from their decades-long slumbers and announced to the current occupants that they might have to pay to keep hold of the ends of their gardens, or pay the Council to take them off their hands. In either instance, money needs to flow from residents to the Council, and no alternative option is suggested.

I am trying to get to the bottom of the facts, which look very much like they may have been written on parchment using a quill and ink in the days when Mrs Wallis Simpson was the talk of London society. But whatever the facts are, once again the Council have put the cart before the horse and sent out threatening letters to residents demanding money out of the blue without explaining the situation or providing offers of help. They also didn’t discuss the issue with ward Councillors to alert us to the situation at all.

It’s the same nasty trick that was pulled with recent letters about graffiti from the Council – a demand for money rather than a constructive offer of help. When did the Council stop being a public service and start acting like a burly bailiff?

The same thing that was done with staff set to lose out in job evaluation – letters sent to arrive on a Saturday, heralding awful news. And the same thing happened last year with letters suggesting that people claiming to live alone to get single person Council Tax discount might be lying.

The Council keep sending out disturbing, worrying, rage-inducing letters without giving a thought to the consequences, and then being utterly blind and deaf to frantic calls for help. My Lib Dem colleague Cllr Steve Wright asked a very relevant question to Council last week calling on the Executive to give re-assurances that the types of thoughtless missives that keep being sent out would stop. He was given that re-assurance, but it doesn’t seem to have stopped. The Council are sending out more threatening letters than a deranged stalker, and it has to stop. They should remember that their function is to provide services and help to residents, not just bill them as and when they see fit.

As regards these particular gardens, Cllr O’Hanlon has tried for three weeks to get a response from the Council officers concerned. They have been silent, whilst residents already strapped for cash contemplate having to pay the Council more money for unclear reasons. It’s not acceptable.

So today I escalated it to Director level, and am grateful hat a response was forthcoming more or less straight away. Hopefully now we will see some re-assuring correspondence between Council and residents before long whilst the complexities of this issue are looked into.

Rick