I’ve been playing about with geolocation of content for my work at Talk About Local, one of the feeds we have mapped in to an Augmented Reality application is Planning Applications.
Having the data within an app for you phone is great but sometimes you want to see it on your desktop machine @ian_norris had asked about doing it, so here is Stoke-on-Trent City Council’s planning applications mapped on to a Google Map. Continue reading
Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.
After last weeks debacle with the unauthorised work on a dropped kerb outside Councillor Hussains house, the same contractors arrived again this morning and removed all the paving stones.
A quick call to Highways and again I find out that they are still not authorised to carry out any work and that the works were stopped on Friday as they did not have the correct paperwork, forms or authorisation to work on a public highway.
You probably can’t see from the video but they are just using a roller to flatten the soil and sand under where the paving stones used to be, no hardcore laid, no check on the services that run under the pavement, just rolling the soil flat.
Two more highways inspectors came out today, stopped the work again and have arranged for the council to come and make the site safe.
No sooner had the officers left when work started again.
If this is how my local councillor and his family treat the council what hope is there for the rest of us?
Again I have to say:
I have no problem with the drop kerb being put in, it is after all, legal and above board with full planning permission, even if when Shazad Hussain was canvassing for votes, he told us it wasn’t a drive.
I do however, have issue with the way that the work is done, the lack of respect for neighbours and the danger that it presents to other road users & pedestrians along with the fact that the work is being carried out other than in accordance with the planning permission IE by the council.
The ongoing saga of my local councillors ‘it’s not a drive’ building works continues.
On the run up to the election Shazad Hussain kept telling everyone that the building work he was doing at his house wasn’t to create a drive, then strangely just after he was elected, planning permission was granted for it to become a drive and for him to have a dropped kerb. If you look at the documents linked below, you will see the decision is delegated which as far as I am aware means, officers sign it off without it going to the planning committee, the planning committee Councillor Shazad Hussain sits on.
The planning application states that the work will be carried out by Highways & Transportation section so I’m not sure why today the comedy contractors came to start work putting in the drop kerb.
These contractors look very much like the same contractors who wrecked all the paving stones on the footway when they did the initial work to make the ‘it’s not a drive’ drive earlier this year. The same ones who had the police called out to them because they left a JCB blocking the pavement with the engine running and went off in a van for a couple of hours.
While they were doing the work today they were blocking the main road with two JCBs and no traffic management other than one guy doing a half hearted job of trying to see what traffic was coming and waving it past the vehicles which were causing the obstruction.
Then they parked their untaxed JCB & probably illegal trailer on the footpath at the side of my house blocking it completely.
Update
I have called highways and they have no record of any work being carried out nor do they have the required documents for anyone to do the work. An inspector has been sent out to stop the work although our councillor does appear to be throwing his weight about to try and get the work finished.
All we need now is Highways or the police to come and sort out the illegally parked vehicle and it’s lack of an up to date tax disk..
or the fact that it is not roadworthy in any form
Update at 14:30
Work has been stopped and the council have just been to put up barriers around the hole in the pavement.
Just to be clear, I have no problem with the drop kerb being put in, it is after all, legal and above board with full planning permission, even if when Shazad Hussain was canvassing for votes, he told us it wasn’t a drive.
I do however, have issue with the way that the work is done, the lack of respect for neighbours and the danger that it presents to other road users & pedestrians along with the fact that the work is being carried out other than in accordance with the planning permission IE by the council. I also have issue with the roadworthiness of the JCB pictured above, whether it is actually taxed and indeed insured.
Why do I get so angry about Stoke-on-Trent City Council?
They make it too easy for people to laugh at them, I don’t know if it is naivety, stupidity, lack of skills or just plain old lack of interest. I work in Social Media, I speak to people and advise them on a regular basis, I have been to a number of meetings with the council and spoken to different people about using Twitter for good, or to shout and rant about the really poor usability of their website. I have never asked for a penny, not money for parking, not a consultancy fee, nothing. I have spent hours speaking to people inside the council about how they can use the tools available on the web for good, how they can make small changes that could make a difference to people in the city and to their image.
All of this seems to fall on deaf ears. In the past 2 weeks Stoke-on-Trent City Council have again surpassed themselves with poor implementation of ‘things’
A couple of weeks or so ago, I attracted a new follower on Twitter, @stokehighways who proclaim ‘Notices from the highways department at Stoke-on-Trent City Council for issues affecting traffic and travel in the local area‘.
Yay! Go Stoke…
Protected Tweets! Useful….
Yeah Go Stoke.. Oh, protected tweets.. ?
They are following 12 and have 9 followers. What use is having a public service twitter feed that is protected? I have thought long and hard about this and to be perfectly honest I cannot think of any reason at all. The account in its current state is at best a waste and at worst a joke. @dordotky runs the @stoketraffic twitter feed and has been trying to get some data that would allow him to develop this service for about 12 months, with no luck. Scott has the time & the skills to do something clever with the data, the City Council it seems do not have the time to understand how Twitter actually works so the chances of anything innovative or exciting happening are probably slim.
As I am writing this I have just put in a follow request to them, to see how long it takes for anything to happen.
Today the City Council (re) released the cyclingstoke.co.uk website, a beautifully hand crafted site, with a domain purchased through uk2.net, I know this because again the City Council have either done things on the cheap and not paid uk2.net for the Full Web Diversion package or they haven’t read the instructions on how to apply 3 clicks to make the banner at the top of their site go away. I don’t use UK2.net but it only took me 2 minutes on the web to find the two links.
Sponsored by UK2.net?
Didn’t anyone check the site before they did the press release? Maybe it is just me, maybe it actually is acceptable for a Local Authority run website to show what amounts to an advertising banner. Maybe the council endorse the uk2.net services? I wonder how much revenue they get for the banner?
Aside from these two stunning examples of poor practice on the web, there is the case of the City Farm tender documents that were sent out as an 18mb word document that had all the edits and revisions visible.
This was backed up with Deeds of Agreement that changed from The City Farm on a 5 year tender to a Café in Carmountside cemetery on a 3 year lease.
You can read my article on this on Pits n Pots How Can Stoke-on-Trent City Council Be Taken Seriously When They Produce Documents Like These?
Who can forget the map in the 2010 Budget book that missed one of the 6 towns of Stoke-on-Trent out completely and suddenly turned out to be a ‘proof’ or ‘draft’ version when the error was pointed out to the City Council?
You can read about this on Pits n Pots here Whats Happening To Stoke-on-Trent
Don’t get me wrong, I know I sound like a whinger and those of you who have seen me at local government conferences will have no doubt seen me in the full throws of anger towards some local government officers, but I love my adopted city and I want it to be better.
Is that wrong?
Posted from Stoke-on-Trent, England, United Kingdom.
After the success of #askthecommander back in October, last week I facilitated #asktheleader with Stoke-on-Trent City Council Leader, Councillor Mohammed Pervez.
The meeting was set up as part of the on going consultation about the proposed cuts that the City Council need to make on the back of the Governments CSR. The meeting like #askthecommander was run on Pits n Pots and a couple of other #hyperlocal sites. This was done purposely to show that the meeting was not just the council ticking boxes, by giving the meeting to the community again gives it a greater lever of impartiality and independence.
When I was arranging the meeting the only stipulations I made were, Councillor Pervez had to actually be there (strange I know but it would be easy to fake) and all questions should be answered, even if we couldn’t answer them all in the allotted time they should be answered and published after the event.
As well as Councillor Pervez, Dan Barton Head of Press & Communications was at the meeting and Communications Officer Fay Boulton who was on hand to assist with finding answers & responses.
Councillor Pervez & Dan Barton
The on-line meeting ran for a little over an hour with some 48 people taking part in the event on the night asking some 50 questions. In the four days since the live event, the archive has been replayed some 423 times. I’m pleased to say that most of the questions asked during the event were answered either in the event or by the end of the week and published on Pits n Pots, I’m aware that a couple of questions did slip through the net and am currently following those up.
I’m not sure if the council will continue to use this way of engaging with the public but at least they have given it a try and with a reasonable amount success.
You can replay the #asktheleader event below.