Month: Mar 2009

Categories
Customer Services

White sack

whitesack

In November 2007 when Ealing implemented the new recycling scheme they managed to omit to deliver a white plastic recycling bag to my house. Black mark to Ealing Council. I never got around to ordering one for the simple reason that I just kept on leaving my plastics out in carrier bags and they got collected in the same way they had been previously. No sweat.

I decided to order me one this week. I called 020 8825 6000 at 10:26am on Tuesday 10th March. After less than a minute I was talking to an operator who took my details and I was off the phone within two minutes. I was told a bag would arrive in around 3-5 working days.

After a couple of meetings at the Town Hall this morning I arrived home at around 12:20pm to find the bag by my front door – 3 working days from order. Good job.

Categories
Customer Services Parking Services

Customer services – early morning rush

I had half an hour between meetings this morning so I took the opportunity to do a quick spot check on customer services.

It was 9:05 am by my watch when I arrived and it was a bit daunting at first as there were 20 plus people queuing out of the door to get past the meeters and greeters. They had only just openend the doors and in fact it was all very orderly with a security guy directing people to the three meeters and greeters. It took only three minutes to get past them and get a ticket in my hand at 9.08 am.

Once inside all was calm and ordered with about 40 people waiting to be seen and not many behind me – all the early birds were trying to get their worms. There were 18 people waiting for housing benefits enquiries and 14 people waiting for parking of which 13 wanted permits. Two cash office windows were open with two people being served so no queue there.

It took 26 minutes to get to the front of the parking queue. This is too long. If I thought it took 26 minutes all day I would be worried but I think this was a function of the early morning rush which I had managed to get on the end of. I haven’t had this problem when I have tried this later in the day. There were four staff dealing with parking matters. I will look into how we might improve things first thing. In the meantime if you have any stories to share, good or bad, please do.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Top rated council

cpa-ratings

Today the Audit Commission, the government body that rates councils, awarded Ealing its top rating. Only this Tuesday we finalised a standstill budget after two successive years of a 1.9%, below inflation rise. This award proves that you can control costs and still deliver too. You can see what the Audit Commission has to say here.

Council Leader Jason Stacey said:

The most important measure of our success is resident satisfaction with services, and the good news is real progress is being made. Some 78% of people say the Council is doing a good job, and 72% feel we are efficient and well run. The Government assessment is a tremendous endorsement of the progress that we’ve made.

The numbers that Jason is quoting come from the council’s own residents survey (see here). It’s nice to get the nod from the civil servants at the Audit Commission. It is more important that the 3,030 real people whose opinion we ask in the residents’ survey give us the nod.

Categories
Ealing and Northfield

Brent River Park wins Boris’ cash

Brent River Park is one of ten London parks to win a £400,000 makeover from the GLA. Results were announced today, see voting here. Thanks to everyone who voted. Southall Manor House and grounds was also in the running but only recieved 1,083 votes compared to Brent River Park’s 4,648.

Categories
National politics

Harman and Goodwin

The Goodwin pension saga is in the papers again today. Boris Johnson points out again that the whole Fred the Shred sideshow is rather convenient for the government and keeps the public’s eyes averted from the parlous state of our nation’s finances whilst Brown is fiddling in Washington.

Boris’ best line is:

I don’t wish to sound remotely complacent, but if and when Hattie takes over from Gordon Brown as leader of the Labour Party, the Tories will be able to stop fund-raising and get on with some truly radical and innovative policies, because Labour will be out of office for a decade at least.

I am sure that Labour will be out of office for at least a decade. I think that any time that Harman spends as leader can be added to the base.

All good knock about stuff. But the implication of Harman’s interview with Andrew Marr on Sunday was that Labour would simply come up with a custom made law to swat Goodwin. Quite right you might say but quite wrong when you sit down to think about it. What part of our state can operate effectively if its partners and contractors can’t be sure when the government is going to turn around and use its law making powers to change the rules of the game? Would you do business on that basis?

Today Tom Winsor, the rail regulator from 1999 to 2004, gives a frank account in the Times of how the government proposed to do this in the case of Railtrack when Gordon Brown and Shriti Vadera came up with their evil plan to steal Railtrack from its owners.

Categories
Mayor Johnson

Electric dreams

I am not sure what to make of reports in Today’s Independent and Evening Standard that London Mayor Boris Johnson is seeking to emulate Paris Mayor, Betrand Delanoe’s, “Autolib” electric car scheme.

For one thing burning fossil fuels, losing half if it turning the energy into electricity, losing half of it in transmission losses, losing half of it charging a battery and losing half of it converting it into motion in a motor is a really crap way of propelling a car compared to the internal combustion engine.

For another I have to be suspicious of a scheme from a French Socialist Party mayor that involves the state owning and running a fleet of cars.

Don’t get me wrong. I am not against a fleet of cars available for public use, just wary of their being publicly owned. I am really impressed with car sharing schemes, and if, big if, electric cars make sense I would like to see them owned and run by car sharing experts, not TfL.

More generally I would like to see us explore the whole idea of public cars. Black cabs, minicabs, car hire, car sharing and some version of Autolib are all examples of public cars. Cars used by anyone. Why is it only black cabs can use bus lanes? Are there other concessions we should give public cars to encourage more people to give up their own cars? Why charge VAT on public cars? Aren’t they just another form of public transport? Streetcar claim to be London’s largest car sharing operator and further claim that each of their cars takes 6 private cars off the road.