ask Ian

Written: 08/10/06

As part of National Customer Service Week, the Chief Executive of Cambridgeshire County Council offered to answer any question within 24 hours.

Sounded like fun so I asked him why they've not cleaned up the graffiti on their own signs in Milton two months after it was first reported to them. My email was dated sent on Monday 02/10/06 at 12:53 and read as follows

Subject: Graffiti in Milton

This is an interesting concept and as it happens I do have a question relating to something going on in my village of Milton at the moment.

Why is it that when we report to the County Council graffiti on your own signs it takes *many* weeks to get any action to remove it? The recent spate was first reported to your officers by the chairman of our parish council in early August and I'm told that it's still there today almost two months later. Surely this just encourages yet more graffiti? Shouldn't you be removing all graffiti within a (very short) target time of it being reported to you?

And, on a related subject: it's very easy to turn around many of your street signs on their poles, so the local youths are doing just that at the moment. What, if anything, are the County doing in terms of reviewing the attachment method they use for strapping signs onto poles to prevent this for new signs?

Twenty three hours and fifty five minutes later (right on the wire there) on Tuesday I got this response:

Dear Mr Oldham,

Thank you for your interest.

I will be able to provide a full response to your query by the end of the week, when I will have been able to consult with the relevant members of staff.

Thank you for taking the time out to contact me,

Ian Stewart

Chief Executive
Cambridgeshire County Council

To be fair the Web page advertising this scheme actually said "ask me a question and receive a personal response within 24 hours" so I've got a "response", it's just not an answer. Yet. But he's still got 3.5 days left.

On Friday morning at 10:33 I got this reply:

Dear Mr Oldham,

Thank you again for your email. I apologise that I was unable to supply a full response immediately.

If graffiti is offensive in nature Cambridgeshire County Council try to get it attended to as soon as possible, but in other cases we try to accumulate a reasonable amount of work together in that area, to make it more cost effective when sending out our small works crews to tackle the problem. This can mean that there is a short delay in getting it removed.

When graffiti is applied to highway signs, removing it can destroy the reflectivity of the sign, which sometimes means a new sign is required and this can take some time to manufacture and erect.

We entered into a new highways services contract in September and unfortunately the previous contractor did not complete all the work required and this has meant a backlog of work has built up. We are working through this with our new contractor but some delays will be inevitable.

I can assure you that we are aware of the graffiti in Milton and it will be attended to as soon as possible.

Regards,

Ian Stewart

Chief Executive
Cambridgeshire County Council

So no reply to the sign rotating question, and the signs in Milton, other than the ones the parish council has cleaned, are still covered in graffiti. Still perhaps this exchange might gee them up a bit ...
 

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