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A man with broom is no substitute for a caretaker
• CHEAPER for the council worse for the tenants!
Sidney Boyd Court has an excellent caretaker, Ellen.
However, we were still included in the pilot scheme for the estate outside areas to be cleaned by the street cleaning company Veolia.
We had a meeting with the assistant director of housing to say we didn’t want to be part of the pilot but, as always, tenants’ views were ignored.
Ellen now has more properties to look after so she has less time for our estate.
So what do we get from the street cleaning team?
One man with a broom for three hours on a Thursday.
Absolutely no modern machinery.
Last Thursday he didn’t sweep up half the leaves: the estate didn’t look as if it had been cleaned.
What can’t be done in the three hours doesn’t get done.
Anything that may need cleaning up between Thurdays either gets ignored or the caretaker has to phone the street cleaning service to report it if it’s a health and safety hazard.
How can that be viewed as an improvement on what we have had before: a caretaker who takes a pride in her work and works with tenants to keep the estate clean and attractive in appearance?
Councillor James King may not think keeping the grounds of an estate clean and attractive is an important part of a caretaker’s duties (Cleaning pilot to run for a year, October 16). My neighbours and I do.
A man with a broom for three hours is a very poor exchange.
This pilot is flawed to start with so why don’t they call it off? At least for Sidney Boyd Court.
PAULINE RYAN
District Management Committee Rep for Sidney Boyd Court, NW6
Estates trial complaints
• THE New Journal is to be congratulated for keeping in the news the “trial” contract which substitutes Veolia street cleaning staff for caretakers on estates in Swiss Cottage, Kilburn and West Hampstead.
The news brief item (Private firm to clean estates, October 9) was in fact the fifth report on the threat to estate caretaking since January.
After just two weeks of the year-long trial the Lymington Road estate is sadly “lagging behind” – as Councillor James King would put it – its previous excellent standard of cleanliness.
We have a Veolia cleaner who wanders slowly about sweeping leaves.
Drinks cans and other pieces of rubbish are left lying where they were thrown, most conspicuously on that part of the estate fronting Lymington Road.
Our excellent resident caretaker is presumably deployed elsewhere.
It is important that all residents on estates in Swiss Cottage, Kilburn and West Hampstead, whether tenants or leaseholders, assess the quality of work being done by Veolia.
If they judge it to be unsatisfactory, they must complain to the on-site supervisor as directed by the assistant director, housing management, who has provided the relevant information.
A list at the back of his last letter tells you who your on-site supervisor is. Other residents on this estate and I did not know of the existence of our on-site supervisor.
We have never seen him. Perhaps this is an area of middle management where money-saving cuts could be made?
The final irony is that the letters informing us of the new regime come on paper headed Housing and Adult Social Care.
Not much evidence of the latter.
ANGELA ELLISON
Lymington Road Estate, NW6
They’re not performing
• I CANNOT believe Liz Wheatley, deputy Camden Unison convener, and colleagues (Letters, October 16) can use the excuse that Camden’s caretakers have low morale due to the introduction of reorganisation.
She also blames the use of outside contractors (Veolia).
What Ms Wheatley is obviously missing, is the point that the residents who pay for this service are not happy about the level of caretaking at our homes.
She is only there to represent the poor caretakers, and how sad they are at having to work harder to justify their incomes. Poor them, ah, sob, sob.
What about us who pay for this inferior service? Ms Wheatley quotes that the caretakers are trained to the British Institute of Cleaning standards, and that any monies should be spent on more caretakers rather than getting in help from outside. This infuriates me.
Veolia are a specialised firm who train their workers correctly.
Camden Council are a poor council with no extra money to spare. As we, the residents, pay for this service (begrudgingly in most cases), can I suggest Ms Wheatley gets off her high horse and examines the many complaints raised about caretaking over the past five years before making the assumption of how to spend our money?
Any outside help is an asset to Camden’s failures with caretaking. I know of several blocks/ estates where residents assist the caretakers by cleaning over weekends. If our caretaker did half the jobs Ms Wheatley claims they are responsible for, we wouldn’t need help from Veolia, or anyone else.
Is the argument about value for money, or is it a caretaking shop stewards’ argument?
If you are not doing the job you are paid for, either quit, or improve your level of cleaning or get outside help. Whatever you decide, just don’t argue about it all and whinge that Camden Council is selling you down the river.
You are not performing, it’s that simple!
Why should you expect us to keep paying for a service that is not being met? (Caretakers receive between £22,000 and £28,000 a year. That’s something to think about, when you are working hard to pay for this service.)
Councillor James King stated that 20 per cent of social housing sites were found to be of an unacceptable standard. Twenty per cent! That’s a huge amount in my calculations.
I’m of the opinion that all Camden’s caretakers should be replaced.
They are obviously not performing, and it brings into question the training they receive, which is always mentioned when anyone raises a complaint about standards.
Tell us why the figure of 20 per cent is so high, Ms Wheatley, before you try to justify why we should keep you all in employment.
name and address supplied, W1
Service on the cheap?
• I AM a confused Camden caretaker.
Just over a year ago we caretakers got a slap on the back from the high-ups, and they couldn’t sing our praises enough for helping them get the highest award possible for council services.
We were told that our standard of caretaking was the envy of all other boroughs, indeed I myself saw fact-finding teams from other councils come to our patch to find out how to achieve it themselves. And not just London boroughs, but a delegation from Sweden arrived to talk to patch managers and caretakers so they could emulate us.
Later in that year it was announced that cuts would have to be made, then all of a sudden we, the caretakers, were told that our standard of caretaking was so poor that private outside contractors would have to brought in to replace our outside work.
Am I being cynical in thinking that the real reason private contractors are taking over our work is that the council hopes to get it on the cheap regardless of the service to the residents?
Name and address supplied
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