Wednesday 12 September 2012

Ulverston Shop Traders Beware

Amey is coming back to the 'High Street'.

Work on replacing the cobbles down Market Street is planned to resume on October 1st.

Last time they were here, their own workers described the work they were doing in replacing a perfectly good road surface as crazy when what really needed doing futher down the street was not being tackled. (Now they are returning to 'finish the work'.)


This unnecessary work caused major disruption in our main shopping street. What is more, though the quality of road surface was good and done with excellent materials, it was done at the wrong level leaving very little gutter on one side. It was also done extremely slowly and antagonised many of the shopkeepers with the casual attitude to efficiency by the Amey workers who arrived late worked slowly and several days not at all.

This time will the work be any more efficient ?

Are our County Councillors going to be more on the ball this time?

The following comments were mailed to County Councillor James Airey on August 21st when he wrote:
 "the work to finish the cobbles on Market Street will begin on the 1st of October."


This is great but what exactly does 'finish' mean:

How far?  to the A590 ?

To the same standard as before?

Will the public and shopkeepers being subjected to the appalling behaviour of Amey/ IT Shaw work force in the casual and disorganised way they performed their work ?

Are steps being taken so that the work is done quickly - for instance :

Starting from opposite ends at the same time?

Working quickly and efficiently on the cobbles starting very early in the morning until late in the evening?

I believe that with competent work and organisation, the last lot of work could have been done in less than a third of the time.

How closely will you be monitoring the progress or will it again by up to the public to complain and publish stuff on Youtube as I did in order to get an improvement in the standard of work?

The result you may remember was that the gutter height was in some parts close to only an inch high  with a sudden slope, clearly visible by the newsagent,  downwards that followed immediately after this was pointed out by me on Youtube  - A stretch I now refer to as Dellow slope.

On the basis of past experience I suspect you and Peter Hornby, our county councillors, will do nothing to get the work done efficiently and surrender all responsibility to us - the general public to make sure the job is done well.

Can you assure me that things will be run differently in October?

There are several of us that will be monitoring the work carefully - even day by day starting October 1st.

The people to contact with your concerns are 
James Airey  - email james.airey@cumbria.gov.uk phone:  01229 588461 mobile:  07734 265963 who represents North Ward and 
the less experienced Peter Hornby email peter.hornby@cumbria.gov.uk phone:  01229 585416 mobile:  07747 711576 who actually is the councillor concerned with the town centre.

Whilst on the theme of county councillors,  isn't time that the south Ulverston Ward that includes Croftlands ditched their ineffective conservative councillor Peter Hornby and got themselves a decent hard working county councillor?

Time to be thinking seriously about who next, as the election comes up in May next year.

No not by electing an ineffective Labour Councillor like Wendy Kolbe who annoyed the residents of South Ulverston because of her incompetence (even hardy Labour Party members regretted her appointment which she hung on to for twenty years - she was described by other County Councillors as effective as a wet lettuce). What this ward needs is someone with character who can do a difficult job well. How about John Lawrence? He did a hard job of reducing the work force at Glaxo when it had to be done and was highly regarded by the engineering professionals that worked alongside him at Glaxo.

Many of the people in this ward need a good kick up the backside. They get poor politicians because they just let things happen around them. People like Carl Fines who is so fed up with politics and politicians that he refused to vote as ever (he told me he never has) at the last election, even for people he admired (me!).

Come on now with problems like Highways (the missing island where North Lonsdale Road meets the A590, that slipped through Wendy's wide open fingers), and the town centre and the Environment Agency, SLDC and CCC, the poor support regarding flooding in South Ulverston: you need a strong , honest, hardworking politician - John Lawrence - if he will do the job (he stood as a Labour Town Councillor this year and sadly North Ward didn't snap him up).

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