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DAMESATHOME@GMAIL.COM
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Sunday 22 February 2015

A RESIDENT WRITES ABOUT NON ENFORCEMENT

The Dame wishes more of you would write in with your thoughts on life in the Borough.
This is an excellent addition to the debate. 
Thanks Local Resident


Dear Dame,

Having lived in our fair borough for some decades, I have been forced to acknowledge that basically I am living on a sand dune:when it comes to keeping the streets nice, and noise and other nuisance at a bearable level, air pollution at bay as much as possible, and avaricious developers on the straight and narrow where listed buildings and conservation area properties are concerned, it seems to be two strides forward , then sliding one step back...

After discussing this with neighbours, the general feeling seems to be that, although layers of laws, by-laws and regulations exist, our council seems strangely reluctant to enforce them .
Why is that, one wonders...? 
We are told, that there just is not enough manpower to cope 
with it all. 
How is that possible, when the Leader of the Council in one of his roadshows proudly declared that in the past fiscal year RBKC had managed to save £28m, and yet there is money in the pot to purchase designer chairs to be bashed about by schoolboys(Holland Park Academy); to purchase expensive items of public art, and support loss-making musical extravaganzas?

Although some enforcement officers are working very hard, and one feels that the improvement  of an area is of genuine concern to them, the same cannot be said for all of them, or indeed for all of their senior officers.

Planning enforcement has made a goodish effort, although anything rightly or wrongly considered a "minor infraction" is still likely to fall through the cracks. 
Transportation and Highways have made slip-ups in the past, and then, to compound matters, sadly found it necessary to stick by their "misinterpretations" (they don't make "mistakes" , don't you know). 

Environmental Health find it impossible to hand out fines to taxis , coaches and other large vehicles with Diesel engines found parked up with engines idling , of which there are many to be found in our borough . Also , barking dogs in the night and some hotel machinery stand a fair chance of flying
under the radar .

So why is our council so bashful, when it comes to dispensing fines??? This is tantamount to
disregarding a potential source of additional council revenue, which might go some way to improving living conditions in our densely populated streets. 

Until someone pulls their finger out, we shall have to circumvent homemade pavement and road obstructions, crunch through sand and grid on the pavement, hear barking dogs at half-hourly intervals during the night, narrowly miss unsecured skips in the roads when driving home at night,
and cough our way through the heavily air polluted streets of RBKC.

My plea to RBKC enforcement officers..... will you please, please exert some control over the miscreants, who make the lives of many of us a misery on a daily basis!!! 
One wonders, if failure to do so could amount to aiding and abetting...

Regards,

A local resident 

4 comments:

  1. The Council seems determined to allow constructors and developers to flout the law and make residents lives a misery.
    Not only do developers not pay for licences, they routinely break the Highway Code , the road traffic laws, conditions of licences and CTMPs. The council is either complicit with this or takes no action, so effectively they are complicit. They have no regard for residents safety and are too busy trying to assist the developers/constructors while we (not the constructors/developers) are paying for the salaries via Council Tax and are being put at risk. Are they waiting for a death?
    It is the Wild West of Kensington and Chelsea.! At what point does a Council become rogue?

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  2. Sadly, it is highly likely that nothing will happen unless someone files legal action against the Council for their failure to not enforce. With basements, it wasn't until the Planning Department actually started getting hit with Judicial Reviews and other legal actions before progress was made in fixing what was obviously a huge and unfair problem. They will take the easy way out until they are forced to improve. Bring on the lawyers!

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  3. The council is complicit. It routinely uses enforcement to attack those it dislikes or fears, while turning a blind eye to blatant law and regulation breaking by the favoured few. Another issue is that the Town Hall is obsessed with its image. It's a shambles, riddled with more or less dubious practices; yet it retains it's official 5 star status.

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  4. try ELRS - Lyn Carpenter as it is her staff that can deal with engines left running

    ReplyDelete

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