Special treatment

Treevo

SmallL wrote: »

My parents backdoor was sticking, the council took months to come out and 'plane' the stuck bit.
In the winter the gap was 3/4 inch and it took them a month again to finally replace the door. Imagine the draught!!

Why did your parents expect the council to do this? Surely they could have done at least the former?

Doing it themselves would surely be better than having a sticking door? No wonder councils are having to cut back on essential services when people expect them to plane a door for them!

browneyedbazzi

Treevo wrote: »

Why did your parents expect the council to do this? Surely they could have done at least the former?

Doing it themselves would surely be better than having a sticking door? No wonder councils are having to cut back on essential services when people expect them to plane a door for them!

Many people wouldn't have the tools/skill/ability to do it themselves and people generally would expect a landlord to make repairs/carry out maintenance on the fabric of a rented property (it's one of the plus sides of renting over owning that you don't have to worry about such things). The lease probably sets out what is the responsibility of the landlord and what the tenant can/can't do themselves.

teawithmilk

As someone who used to work for "the council" I am reading this with panic and feel I have to put the other side forward.

Even though people think that council workers sit on their backsides and do nothing I can assure you that the majority of council officers are overworked and are "firefighting" on most days of the week....dealing with the most serious/risky problems first and trying to work through the others. All the people I have ever worked with in councils try their best with increasingly limited resouces yet the councillors and senior managers try to pretend that they can still give the same service even though budgets have beem massively cut.

Queue jumping your problem by going to your MP or councillor (unless it is a serious problem or has been overlooked for weeks) just means others who are following the guidelines for reporting a problem get delayed even more (maybe this is why your previous complaints have been delayed in getting sorted...because some kind person decided to go have a moan to their councillor...and jumped the queue.

Most departments have a guide to how long it will take to get things sorted...in my department we used to say 14 days and tell the person reporting that, so that they wouldnt be expecting us to turn up the next day and sort it.

I dont like fix my street...it looks great to the person using it but I can assure you it causes no end of problems for the poor customer service staff at the other end as it comes in as an e mail and the nice map that you (the person reporting the problem) sees does not get sent to the council so they have to waste time figuring out where the problem is. The best way is to just do the old fasioned thing and phone up (or e mail the council directly- most have customer service e mail addresses) and make sure you keep your reference number in case you did need to chase it up..I got sick of hearing from people who got onto their councillors saying "we have reported this dozens of times" then we would get a personal rollicking for not sorting it and then having to drop work for genuine people to prioritise the one that the councillor was reporting (not that the are SUPPOSED to get preferential treatment over and above a normal citizen) whereas in fact the person was lying and had never reported it previously!

We very rarely got praised or compliments or thank yous but the consatant complaints from councillors that we werent doing our jobs properly and hints that we were all just lazy and inefficient when in fact most of my colleagues went above and beyond in the face of constant changes and cutbacks was what made me leave....I feel sorry for my old colleagues. In the authority where I used to work they have made millions of cutbacks for the last 2 years and they have now been told they have to lose another £115 million pounds ...where do the councillors think that is going to come from??? when everything else has already been pared back to the bone....the only thing that can go is jobs and staff which means that there will be even fewer officers and staff to respond to complaints.

Sorry rant over. Please just have some sympathy for the poor person "at the council" who is trying to juggle the umpteen complaints.

Treevo

browneyedbazzi wrote: »

Many people wouldn't have the tools/skill/ability to do it themselves and people generally would expect a landlord to make repairs/carry out maintenance on the fabric of a rented property (it's one of the plus sides of renting over owning that you don't have to worry about such things). The lease probably sets out what is the responsibility of the landlord and what the tenant can/can't do themselves.

I can't imagine there are many people who live without 24 hour care who are incapable of picking up a telephone and finding a handy man to come and plane their door for £25 or whatever.

And if they weren't - they have children who could have done it for them, surely?

SmallL

Treevo wrote: »

I can't imagine there are many people who live without 24 hour care who are incapable of picking up a telephone and finding a handy man to come and plane their door for £25 or whatever.

And if they weren't - they have children who could have done it for them, surely?

No they didn't have the tools, I'm an only child and also don't have the tools.
I think my parents did look up that it was he landlords responsibility since its an external door.

Treevo

SmallL wrote: »

No they didn't have the tools, I'm an only child and also don't have the tools.
I think my parents did look up that it was he landlords responsibility since its an external door.

You don't have a phone or the ability to find a handyman who would've fixed the problem for £25?!

But yes, it's much better to wait for months rather than take a bit of initiative and improve your own situation.

SmallL

Treevo wrote: »

You don't have a phone or the ability to find a handyman who would've fixed the problem for £25?!

But yes, it's much better to wait for months rather than take a bit of initiative and improve your own situation.

They pay rent and within that is the maintenance of the house, therefore you expect it to be maintained!
Of course you can pay someone else but why should you when its supposedly included?

Also I had no idea about the problem until they got a new door as I was at University.

paulineb_2

I've been waiting 8 weeks or more for a repair to my kitchen flooring that should have been done in 7 days. It's left me unable to get a washing machine put in. When the joiner turned up he refused to do the repair until my kitchen units were ripped out. I'm getting a new kitchen but that could be 2 months away and he didn't know that. It also caused me problems with the housing because an officious jobsworth turned up at my door who was there unplanned on another matter and took exception to the fact the repair hadn't been done and said she was putting a formal report in about me.

Sorry. But I don't buy the poor overworked council staff having to deal with all these repairs and if you complain someone else will miss out. I don't complain for complainings sake but perhaps if the local council, my local council spent some of its massive surpluses on employing more tradesmen and admin staff and had a better way of reporting and responding to complaints then people might not need to contact their mps or local councillors to get the simplest things done.

Also, if you report an anti social issue in my specific area the housing office tend to ignore it. I've had one visit from a housing officer in 18 years. Other areas, workers are much more visible and involved.

I'd always go through proper channels, but sometimes elected representatives are there to help when all else fails, because sometimes local councils just can't be bothered. It took me weeks of phone calls and 2 visits from housing inspectors to get some sort of resolution to my problem, all stemming from one employee who couldn't be bothered to do a job.

Because his boss made it very clear that it was a simple repair and should have been done. He just couldn't be bothered.

Treevo

SmallL wrote: »

They pay rent and within that is the maintenance of the house, therefore you expect it to be maintained!
Of course you can pay someone else but why should you when its supposedly included?

Also I had no idea about the problem until they got a new door as I was at University.

To make your life easier? To not depend entirely on the state for every little thing?

Treevo

paulineb wrote: »

I've been waiting 8 weeks or more for a repair to my kitchen flooring that should have been done in 7 days. It's left me unable to get a washing machine put in. When the joiner turned up he refused to do the repair until my kitchen units were ripped out. I'm getting a new kitchen but that could be 2 months away and he didn't know that. It also caused me problems with the housing because an officious jobsworth turned up at my door who was there unplanned on another matter and took exception to the fact the repair hadn't been done and said she was putting a formal report in about me.

Sorry. But I don't buy the poor overworked council staff having to deal with all these repairs and if you complain someone else will miss out. I don't complain for complainings sake but perhaps if the local council, my local council spent some of its massive surpluses on employing more tradesmen and admin staff and had a better way of reporting and responding to complaints then people might not need to contact their mps or local councillors to get the simplest things done.

Also, if you report an anti social issue in my specific area the housing office tend to ignore it. I've had one visit from a housing officer in 18 years. Other areas, workers are much more visible and involved.

I'd always go through proper channels, but sometimes elected representatives are there to help when all else fails, because sometimes local councils just can't be bothered. It took me weeks of phone calls and 2 visits from housing inspectors to get some sort of resolution to my problem, all stemming from one employee who couldn't be bothered to do a job.

Because his boss made it very clear that it was a simple repair and should have been done. He just couldn't be bothered.

Who's paying for your new kitchen?