A FairyTile of Fairfield

I moved into my present home over two years ago and one of the first things I did was to attend a meeting in the local schoolwith representatives from Kensington Regeneration and the Architects BCA Landscapes. We were there to see the new “improvments” whihc were being carried out in the area. We were shown some very nice drawings of trees, planters, parking bays, new walls and gates. Looked smashing, it would amke the area look miles better and best of all it was free. I even started attending the monthly “Consultation” meetings, where we could obviously further contribute to the process of regeneration.

The  whoel scheme was going to kick off in July 2008 and by the end it will have cost a mere £1.1 Million. Well the meetings seemed to be going well, we were asked adn told, and shown, but jsut before the work started there was a bit of bombshell, as it then was revealed that not every house was having the work done on them and a lot of the street furniture and changes were not happening either. Then we found out the the contract had been awarded to a local comapny called Acorn Building who were assured by Mike O’Connell, (the project manager from BCA Landscapes) that the company had done this type of work before, whichw asnt actually true (http://www.stepclever.co.uk/business/news/kirkdale-based-acorn-contract-services-wins-1-12m-gardens-contract.aspx the new machinery by the way was a £20,000 tramac machine). The work started and pretty soon it all started to unravel, to begin with there didnt seem to be many people on the job, the “Few” began in our street rebuilding the walls, and my first problem cam when a downspout pipe was broken and repaired with cement and gaffer tape, just before being buried under paving slabs. I got that sorted out and was told it was a “temporary repair” which it wasnt.

The next thing was the walls had concrete lintles put on them, the ones coming out perpendicular to the house was not laid even, (still hasnt be rectified) and the concrete block end finsihes rathe abruptly ( I was told this was a matter of aesthetics, not much consultation there).

The concrete lintles were painted….it rained and the paint washed off, they were painted again….it washed off again (Mike O’Connell laughes at this as it was obviosuly funny that painters had used the wrong paint twice). Third time lucky, the paint stayed although a little flakey.

The same men who built the wall then started laying the tiles and it became evident very quickly that they werent trained tilers. To cut a very long story short this matter was brought up time and time again, and we were assured that they would be sorted out in the snagging period or during the fault period., Mile O’Connell of BCA Landscapes seems to think these tiles are fine, I dont.

So any suggestiosn as to what we should be doing about these blasted tiles.

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