Shropshire Council - Answers Please? Part 5

I’m actually going to start with an apology, because it’s official, there is no time frame for me to stop whinging and moaning about Shropshire Council, though I probably will when they stop wasting public money, but I believe that will be a very long time after what I see day to day, and as a taxpayer, it is very, very frustrating.

Admittedly this one may be a little shorter, but it’s one I had to write about because of how I feel about workers going back to do the same job time and time again; the wastage and therefore the costs are horrendous!

So, look at these two photos; one was from a post I published on the 22nd of March, and it shows the pothole that needs to be repaired (zoomed in and snipped.) Look at my photograph from today; there’s a second white border, but it’s around a pothole that was there on the original photograph. Surely it was bad enough on the first visit to have had its white border painted?

And so more wasted money, not from the repair team, but this time from the person with the white spray paint; even they go to the same area twice to spray round potholes that are side by side, and I will use my favourite phrase, ‘it beggars belief.’ Does this person just drive around Shrops all day looking for potholes to make more colourful? And what is wrong with painting around the other potholes? When will they get a nice white border, maybe after another 3 or 4 visits with the tin of paint? Either way I sense a waste of money – again!

I cannot understand why this happens or why people are allowed to get away with it. With our government and local councils being in so much debt, surely there are people and departments that monitor the financial aspect of government spending at all levels. Well, obviously not, but there certainly should be. And this is what I see with road and pavement repairs. Imagine if we had access to other departments and were able to see how they operate and at what costs; I’m sure there would be savings to be made there too.

Talking pavements, one of ours was dug up again today, this time by Severn Trent Water, who were replacing water stop taps, and so we now have more colours to add to our patchwork quilt of a pavement! Yet I wonder if these companies actually work together. So when Shropshire Council decided to try to repair our pavement, did they contact other utility companies to see if they had any work planned? This way the pavement would only be dug up once, leaving the same colour of patches on the quilt and only inconveniencing pedestrians and residents once!

It’s just a thought, maybe not possible, I really don’t know, but wouldn’t it be good if there was a national type database where councils and other sectors like Highways England and the utilities companies could all enter future planned work so they could work closer together and maybe save themselves time and therefore money?

It doesn’t have to be a long-winded report with plans and drawings. Just the street or road name or number and the postcode; a brief description of the work being done, with the name of the responsible person. One company could then decide to undertake repairs at, say, AA11 9ZZ, and another company has work starting, so it logs on and enters the postcode to see if any other department or company is planning to do anything in that same area. If work could be co-ordinated, the two responsible people would speak to each other and sort things out. I don’t know, but surely the so-called experts could get their heads together to come up with something.

But I have asked Shropshire Council to justify this waste of money, and of course I/we will never get answers because they don’t need to justify themselves when spending our money, and there can’t be a great deal of financial judgement as according to an online search, they are over £50m in debt, and how can that happen? I’d love to spend a day in the financial director’s office to hear what goes on and ask a few questions.

But back to Severn Trent and their repairs, I’m assuming this isn’t critical; it was found blowing down the street towards my neighbour!

Finally, I’ve just been out walking the dogs and came across this sign, and if you look at my post Part 3, from 29th March, you will see it had been left at the side of the road – guess what? More money left lying about. Not bad for an organisation that hasn’t got any!

Thanks for reading

DJ