Dear Elizabeth,
Politics is about priorities.
Noisy neighbours make life hell for all of us.
Once there was a time when the noise nuisance team was relatively efficient....sadly, no longer.
Even before cutbacks, it was at best desultory.
You are spending hundreds of thousands of £'s on the noise producing Opera Holland Park for the benefit of just a few.
Residents are fed up with this misappropriation of their money.
Stop the subsidies and divert the savings into a truly efficient Royal Borough focused 24 hour/7 days a week team with proper powers to deal with a problem that drives people suicidal.
End all this keeping of logs and cut to the chase by having a 'no tolerance' strategy so that offenders are hit hard with punitive fines.
There are many things the Council does well; sadly protecting law-abiding residents from hellish neighbours is not one.
With best wishes,
The Dame
This would be wonderful
ReplyDeleteIf Hornton Street wants to endear itself to residents it should spend some Council Tax on really useful things like noise and nuisance control and DIY help for the elderly and infirm living alone. These things cost peanuts but have a huge impact on the quality of life of residents.
ReplyDeleteWhy are the Ward Councillors not agitating for this? What is the point of Ward Councillors? What do they do for their allowances and pomp events?
ReplyDeleteWhat do they do? NOTHING. Just collect the dosh, which could be classed as inappropriately earned income.... As for pomp events? They obviously support them, especially the 3rd rate Holland Park Opera
DeleteErr - wait a bit - wasn't the council universally pilloried for determinedly prosecuting someone over their child's piano playing?
ReplyDeleteThose in Horton Street are NOT at all interested in noise abatement. Elsewise, they would have stopped subsidising the 3rd rate Holland Park Opera. Whichever way you look at it, it is nothing but a LOT OF GHASTLY NOISE. I know, my sett has to put up with it, as we live near the waterfall... The patrons are nothing but the pretentious lot, who go to see and be seen. The music is of secondary, if of any, consideration. As for concern for the elderly? There is NONE. This is confirmed by Dizzy Lizzy's swift discontinuation of the Stay Put Handyman service. Many elderly, disabled people relied on this service, to attend to small, yet important jobs... Highly unlikely to be ever re-instated... They money is needed to the Holland Park Opera House sycophantic lot...
ReplyDeleteSave the STAY PUT HANDYMAN SERVICE and ditch the Opera
ReplyDeleteFat chance of this happening.You will fly to Mars before this is even considered, let alone reinstated.. sad, but true...
DeleteDear Dame
ReplyDeleteYou appear to be ignorant of the antics of the noise nuisance team in recent years - inefficiency and lack of funding is not the problem, ignorance and incompetence is!
Take for example the squandering of hundreds of thousands of pounds of our RBKC taxpayers’ money attempting to ban two school children from playing the piano in after school hours on behalf of one well-connected multimillionaire resident (complaining about 1.5 hours per day of piano playing!). The children’s other neighbours said there was no problem!
Also, take for example the experience of Mr Mustafa Karim and his neighbours in the north of the borough - Mr Karim spoke at the Full Council Meeting on the 23rd January (available to view on the RBKC webcast of this meeting), and explained that for the past four years, he and his neighbours have made hundreds of complaints to the RBKC noise team about Tesco Express trolleys crashing into the walls of his home every day from 6am until 11pm. Mr Karim and his neighbours were told that the noise nuisance officers could not / would not take any action on residents’ behalf because, “Tesco is a giant company and the council cannot fight giant companies”!
You are wrong and misguided to think that even more taxpayers’ funds should be diverted into an incompetent, poorly trained, unreasonable and unaccountable noise team who consider that it is worth spending hundreds of thousands of pounds on attempting to ban school children’s piano-playing. Unsurprisingly, they failed! AND had to pay all legal costs at taxpayer expense!
Noise nuisance officers have the option to direct residents to take private action as they did in the recent high profile “El Kerrami vs Fouladi” dispute. It begs the question why they did not take this approach with the well-connected Mr Baptista and his now ex-wife Ms Allen who were complaining about 1.5 hours of piano-playing per day! As for the poor residents in the north of the borough with genuine noise nuisance complaints, they are victims of an ill-equipped noise nuisance team with a perverted misunderstanding of their duties and the law on statutory nuisance.
This department has become totally useless. If the best they can do is target piano-playing children on behalf of wealthy residents, whilst ignoring genuine serious complaints about real nuisances, then all funding should be withdrawn.
@18:59 Thank you for summarising this disgrace which is typical of RBKC.
ReplyDeleteWhen I called out Noise and Nuisance team some years ago, the attending officer talked at length about himself, telling me he lived in the countryside and all he heard in the morning were mooing cows, he smiled and suggested I move out of London! I was concerned he attended alone and spoke at great length about himself, distracting from the work in hand, it was very uncomfortable.
The ongoing level of unprofessionalism residents receive from RBKC across the piece must not be tolerated.
Herein expemplafies the problem; RBKC officers responsible for making serious decisions affecting the lives of residents, do not understand basic problems and often do not even live in London. Its just their 9-5.
Very interesting @10.52.....would you happen to remember the name of the officer who visited you several years ago? Was it Raymond Asagba or Keith Mehaffy?
ReplyDelete@10:52 of the two which would you guess?
ReplyDelete