When the cat's away ... run a consultation.

An eagle eyed resident was kind enough to point out that the Council's consultation on opening up our gardens is both very short and taking place entirely during the month of August when many residents are likely to be away. 

The letter from Patrick Sean Sullivan is dated the 6th of August. The deadline given is the 28th of August. That is, at best, 22 calendar days. And all within the month of August. 

The consultation period is also unusually short. The equivalent letter for a proposal to paint some shed and garage doors was dated the 16th of July and set a deadline of the 14th of August. That's 29 calendar days. 

The proposal to paint shed and garage doors will not have a negative impact on anyone. Not all residents have a shed or a garage and many simply won't care whether the Council paints them or not.

The proposal to open up our gardens to the general public (for that is what it is) will have a detrimental impact on all residents, and particularly those living next to the gardens, for the many, many reasons we have cited previously (see our previous post for the gory details). 

Would any sane person believe that a proposal to paint some shed and garage doors is worthy of a longer consultation period than a proposal to open up our gardens to all and sundry? We suspect not. 

But the Council's Housing Management Department clearly do. 

Why? Because they are perfectly aware of the fact that a significant number of the estate's residents are likely to be away for some or all of the month of August. And they are quite cynically taking advantage of the situation. 

They are hoping that those likely to object will be away and will miss the consultation altogether.

Dissenting voices are very clearly not welcome. And if those likely to dissent are intentionally (ahem, accidentally) excluded by rigging (ahem, setting) the dates of the consultation in this way so much the better.  

They are quite simply trying to engineer the end result they want. 

The consultation is really a non-consultation. It is designed to tick a box not find out what most residents actually think. Because it's quite clear that Housing Management don't really care what anyone thinks. They simply want to have their way.

This is the kind of behaviour that you might expect of dodgy property developers with questionable planning applications who submit their planning applications at the height of Summer in a cynical attempt to try and avoid any opposition from those affected (and we've had plenty of those before), not the Council. 

Destroying our gardens

A letter from the Council just landed in our letterboxes. 

The letter is signed by a Patrick Sean Sullivan, a member of the Council Housing Department's Environmental Services Team.

This team, which the Council inherited from the TMO, has been the subject of many a complaint from many residents over the years. 

They are no strangers to allegations of corrupt, immoral and dishonest behaviour. 

The letter claims that the Residents Association had asked the Council to open up the estate's gardens.  

They would remove the existing fencing around our garden areas and open them up to public use. 

This is an unbelievably stupid proposal. Monumentally stupid in fact.  

Parts of the estate currently suffer from regular incidents of street drinking, drug dealing, dog fouling and every other kind of anti-social behaviour imaginable. 

We've had drunks from the local pub pass out and collapsed on the ground outside blocks.

Drug dealers are often seen dealing from behind some of the sheds on Ann Lane. 

The local Police do the best they can to deal with the issues. The Council have yet to demonstrate either the willingness or the know-how to deal with any of them. 

Some Council staff actually seem to do the best they can to remain willfully ignorant and pretend those problems don't exist, which is why we appear to be stuck with them.  

And now they want to open up our gardens to all and sundry. 

As if all this ongoing appalling and unwanted behaviour will somehow not simply migrate there and turn our gardens into a hive of anti-social and criminal activity. 

They intend to destroy our gardens and make the lives of those living nearby a misery.

And then they have the temerity to claim this was requested by the Residents Association. 

We know most of the residents on the Residents Association. Most have served on the Residents Association for years and know the estate well. They would not propose this. 

And having now spoken to most of them we know none of them asked for these works. 

None of them were even consulted about them.  

The first they knew of these works were when the letter from Patrick Sean Sullivan arrived at the weekend. 

They're all supposed to have proposed something they knew nothing about!

In truth they are all very strongly opposed to the proposals. They know the damage opening up the gardens would do. 

They know how badly their neighbours would be affected. 

They would not dream of proposing such a damaging and dangerously stupid idea. 

The letter is clearly factually incorrect and grossly misleading. 

The question is whether Patrick Sean Sullivan and the Council know that it is. 

We suspect they do. 

They're lying. 

And they know they're lying. It's clearly intentional. 

We don't know who Patrick Sean Sullivan has been speaking to, but it's clearly not the Residents Association. 

What remains to be seen is just how long they intend to pretend they aren't lying. 

But if they're lying about something like this, what else might they be lying about?