Shropshire Council - Answers Please? Part 2

Okay then, here goes for part 2, and I assumed the last one; however, there is still more to write about, so part 3 will follow. But in this post it will be more about wasting money than anything else!

If you’ve read the first post, you will know I mentioned ‘looking after the pennies.' Well, to me, Shropshire Council doesn’t, and that is based on the fact that time and travel cost money. So, if you send people out to do a job, they are travelling and so incur a cost. They will use fuel, so there is a cost. There will be overheads (operating expenses) that have to be allocated to the job, such as vehicle and tool purchases or rental, materials, and probably more when we dig deeper, even that vehicle insurance, so more costs!

So, if you send someone to do the same job twice, that is wasted money. The people and the team doing the job should be prepared and have the appropriate equipment and materials to do the job right on the first visit. In my positions in the private sector, had I continually sent people and teams out to do the same job twice or more, I would have been sacked for incompetence. We had to take accountability, a bugbear of mine with Shropshire Council, as I don’t believe their people have to take accountability, but that is just my opinion.

So please see this picture of a pothole near to where I live. It’s a bog-standard pothole, except someone has been there repair the hole twice, and they have since been back for the THIRD TIME to fill it in.

They repaired it for the second time a few weeks ago, and as the workmen were doing their bit, my friend walked past and said a friendly ‘thanks guys, glad you’re sorting it out’ type greeting. The workmen replied similar to ‘I don’t know why we’re bothering; we’ll be back next week to do it again!’

The repair on the left, AFTER the second attempt that my friend saw, and how it should have be done first time, or the third time if you’re Shropshire Council

If the workmen know that, why doesn't management? Or do they and just not care, as it is public money? And of course, in my opinion, there seems to be very little accountability when it comes to our money. Why couldn’t they have repaired it to this standard on the first visit, and if not, why not the second time (not that they should have been there twice, let alone three times?)

With this pothole and another two all within about 6/700m of road, workmen have been back to each of these potholes at least twice, and I’m happy to show someone from the Council, but of course no-one seems to be the slightest bit concerned, probably not even David Vasmer, the Councillor in charge of potholes.

Let’s take a look at another pothole just around the corner. Now, seemingly, if you want a pothole repaired, this option works quite well. You simply plant flowers in the pothole, and it will be filled in within hours of your planting, as happened with this one. I walked uptown, and it was just a pothole; when walking back an hour later, it had been decorated with the flowers and soil/compost. Within two hours of the decorations being put in place, the pothole had been repaired. Don’t ask me how or why, but it worked; as others close by had been ignored, it was just this one pothole that had been filled!

You can tell it’s the same pothole by the drain and the uneven pavement. Yep, another one!.

And now it is a busy little roundabout in town, and if I am correct, when the workmen arrive to carry out the road repairs, they will only repair a pothole if it is marked out with white paint, and I am only going from the experiences that I encountered on my street repairs. So why oh why oh why are they only coming to this busy roundabout to repair one pothole when they will have to return in time to repair the rest? To me, working as a manager and having to take responsibility for every penny I spent, this beggars belief, a phrase I use quite often when writing about the spending of our money.

And this is ongoing and happens all the time. This picture shows a busy junction in town, with the white marking telling the workmen where to repair. It will mean they have visited this junction 4 times in the last two years, yep FOUR times. What a waste of time, effort, and, of course, money. There is a new roundabout being put in place soon, but until then the Council will waste our money sending people back to repair the road again and again and probably repair the repairs. I call it pathetic. Why can’t a job be done right the first time?

(And are those more potholes in the background)

But why can’t a job not be finished properly at the same time?. This photo shows Church Street, in Shifnal, where repairs were recently carried out, and this is the mess that is left behind. Some could argue that it was the cars going over the potholes that caused the problem, and it was; however, it is not the root cause of the problem (something I may refer to in a few of my posts.) The root cause was the potholes being there in the first place; no potholes means none to run over, which means no mess.

(A good old-fashioned broom and elbow grease would have helped make our town look a bit better, and we complain about litter louts!)

So, the mess was caused by the Council’s failings in the first place, and irrespective of that, it is their responsibility to keep the roads clean. Back in the day someone would have just picked up a big broom and swept up the mess, common sense, really. I wonder which Councillor is responsible for that?

Councillor Vasmer says, and I quote, he is ‘determined to see improvements.’ Come on, Councillor Vasmer, it can’t get much worse, can it? It certainly wouldn’t take much at all to get those improvements, would it? Getting your guys properly equipped and getting them to do the job right the first time is an improvement. I could get that done if I were appointed to the right position; it's not exactly rocket science, is it?

Recently, and again just around the corner from me, workmen were digging the pavement at the base of a lamp post, and as an ex-health & safety advisor, it was good to see they had a small vehicle in place with a small hiab (crane) on the back to attach to the post and make sure it was held in place, and it didn’t fall on the guys whilst they were working.

And of course there is a but. But why send a separate vehicle, with a guy sitting around watching, and costing a lot of money, when the guys doing the job could have had something similar on the vehicle they had to help carry out their work? Some might say the workman with the hiab needed to observe the situation whilst the others were working. I say he didn’t. With the right equipment using ‘lock out’ systems, or braces, the workmen could easily have secured the lamppost and carried out the work safely at the same time, without the additional cost of the second vehicle and third workman. And I totally understand the street being closed whilst the work was being done, but why leave it closed overnight when the work was being carried out on the pavement?

If the Council disagrees with me, I would be happy to risk assess that type of work and source the correct equipment to help reduce their costs for them. They probably wouldn’t like the invoice I would send them, but as they seem to be so flippant when it comes to spending public money, the invoice would probably get paid!

One lane near us that I use often when cycling was riddled with potholes, and I mean riddled. Yet you would occasionally see a works van from the council parked up with the workers repairing a pothole here and another there, and making no difference to the stretch of road; it was that bad.

I say ‘was,’ as once again, credit to the Council, the full stretch of road has been repaired, and on this occasion, I cannot find fault with the repair, as the road was that bad; patches here and there were pointless, except of course if you’re our Council.

However, what I can find fault with was sending workmen on various occasions to repair one hole here and one there when it was doing nothing for the road and when there must have already been plans in place to repair the full stretch of road?

And these examples are all roads near to my horrible-looking street with its patched-up potholes. There are many, many more close to where I live, and so imagine how many there are over Shropshire.

Councillor Vasmer is also asking us to ‘be patient.’ With my experiences of the repair system, we will have no option;, that is how bad the roads are near my house, never mind county wide!

Thanks for reading.

DJ