The Council has been boasting that Cranbrook Basements have been heavily fined for displaying advertising on the hoardings surrounding their hated mega basement sites.
Clearly, the O' Connor family who own Cranbrook couldn't give a toss and see the fine as part of a cheap advertising budget! They are certainly not quaking in their boots...
PALTRY £1000 FINE |
Anyway, a reader wrote this to the Dame...
Dear Hornet
I live in
Abingdon Road and happened to walk past the dreadful Cranbrook basement excavations which so disrupt our lives.
I saw a very smartly dressed manager in a hi vis jacket and asked him how he
felt about the fine of £1000 his company had received for the ugly advertising
signs on the hoardings.
His reply
rather took me aback.
Rather than
seeming upset he said that he didn’t think it would worry the boss, Mr O’Connor, who had had unpaid advertising on the sites for months and probably thought
£1000 cheap for street advertising that would have cost him tens of thousands
of pounds!
Well, I was
astonished by his response; particularly as the council press release gave the
impression that Mr O’Connor was quivering in his big workmens’ boots.
I thought
you ought to know that Cranbrook seem very relaxed about their puny fine: after
all they are making millions of pounds from their client….
Yours sincerely
JM B*****l- J******p
PS we all miss mole in a hole's cartoons
On any day there are scores of such unauthorised advertisements visible in our streets. Nothing has been done about them till now.
ReplyDeleteWithout wishing to minimise the suffering of neighbours, in a particularly rotten borough way, this story is hilarious. It's like a pantomime constable attacking a villain with the full force of a feather duster.
Cranbrook Basements has to be stopped. I have lived as a suffering neighbour of their projects for far too long. They laugh at the Council because the Planning Department has shown no spine to stop them. They will continue laughing until there is real enforcement and the letter written by your reader is simply evidence of that. Hopefully someone in RBKC will read this and step up what have, to date, been woeful enforcement actions. The sooner we see Cranbrook penalized over and over, the better all our lives will be.
ReplyDeleteThis incident smacks of being little more than a side-show. The Council, and certain Councillors, are obviously desperate to be seen to be doing something, anything about basement developments but the fine is for a piddling amount and the Council clearly has no issue with "unauthorised" builder's advertisements in practice; they're more than happy for the Council's own developments to be plastered with them.
ReplyDeleteI look forward to the day Cranbrook decide to take their business elsewhere out of the Borough and stop torturing us.
ReplyDeleteCranbrook Basements are a highly professional Company paying taxes and providing gainful employment for hundreds of people - those who oppose basement construction are a tiny minority within RBKC - as evident in the recent Basement Policy review - it will be very interesting to see what the Planning Inspectorate make of it all...........
ReplyDeleteHere, here....we are wonderful and my cousin is right. We are very professional at getting our own way
Delete22:38 is delusional. The opposition to basements is anything but a tiny minority. It is a very, very, very large majority of the population of the Borough and the suffering is very widespread. All one need do is read the Councils basement survey response to see just how wide the misery is. I've no doubt the 22:38 comment was written by Cranbrook directly. Perhaps they should do some soul searching an realize that they are making their money on the misery of residents. That's anything but "professional" in my view
DeleteBasement Construction and high end refurbs in RBKC is not down to firms like Cranbrook. Firms like Cranbrook should not be ‘hated’, they are only providing a service for their clients, your neighbours...your fellow people in your borough. Don’t hate a firm or their managing family for making a living out of this. There is also nothing wrong with site hoardings which have the contractors name for health and safety reasons, so this IS NOT a form of advertising considered by high end resi firms
ReplyDelete