Homer Simpson was right-More Tall Tilington GEARS tales

Attended a meeting this week of the GEARS refurbishment management group. In case you dont know where I live is called GEARS www.newgears.wordpress.com which is an acornym of the street names of the area.

The local regeneration company have spent £1.1 (plus an extra £200,000 VAT cock up money) on refurbishment work, this amount of money doesnt go far these days …..£1.3 million  equals SOME new walls, SOME new tiles, SOME new fences and gates. pans out over the 800 homes in Fairfield £1350 (that is if every house gets done, but only 80% of the houses are having something done so its over that amount)

Without going into mind numbing detail, we arent very happy with both the standard of the work (eg were the men tiling Tilers?), etc and some of the materials seem a bit sub standard (eg exterior paint running in the rain-see previosu posts). The most annoying thing is now eveyone seems to be side stepping the responsibility and a professional closing of ranks happening.

These types of jobs are commissioned by a statutory agency, in this case Kensington Regeneration who then employ a firm of award winning architects (BCA Landscapes) to project manage and finally but not least BCA employ ACORN builders to carry out the work. A clear chain of commnaad or responsibility. To cap all of this we the residents association have been “Consulted” about the changes for over a year before the work started (it began in July 2008). The reasons for the length of time offered by the Architects are- The Rain, the lack of permission slips, er….cant think of a third excuse…..

The management /consultation meetings now take on familair pattern, we moan, the architect waffles, we moan again, someone from ACORN waffles, we get shown some “Nice Things” (door plates pictures of trees etc) we leave disaffected, work is not rectified and stays the same.

Anyhow I’ve decided to wthdraw from these meetings on the basis of line from the Simpsons, when Homer  told Marge that it takes

“Two people to lie, one to tell the lie and one to listen to the lie”,  

in other words if I’m not there I dont have to listen to what they have to say, and maybe they’ll shut up and do what they are supposed to do.

There arent many options left for us excpet to wait until after 31st March when officially the work is “finished”. It’s then we need to start thinking of ways of sorting what should have been an uplifting and positive experience but is now a horrible situation for anyone to be in.

Anyone know a surveyor who’ll work for a cup of tea and a sandwich?