November 26: In The Thick of It
AS
re-organisations go, KCC’s efforts to complete a shake-up of its
highways department must be one of the longest on record having
been going on since 2006.
A key part of its plans has been the
development of highways depots in Ashford and west Kent.
The Ashford depot
opened last year but the missing piece of the jigsaw is the as yet
un-built depot for west Kent.
Now it seems KCC has suffered another
setback and been forced to abandon plans to place the depot on a
site near Larkfield, Maidstone.
Instead it plans to develop a site
where staff were relocated on a temporary basis in Aylesford, also
near Maidstone. Now they'll be relocated to somewhere else while
the building work takes place.
Highways chief Cllr Nick
Chard insists that this option offers the best value for
money option. That maybe the case but why was so much effort
expended on trying to find another site after KCC dropped its
scheme for a depot at Wrotham off the A20?
The Wrotham proposal
hit the buffers in 2008 after KCC decided not to contest a Judicial
Review brought by opponents of the scheme.
County councillors were told as
recently as this July a deal to buy the land KCC had identified as
a replacement site had been agreed but it was dependent on the
authority securing planning permission.
Now that plan has been scrapped. It'd
be interesting to know exactly how much has been spent not just on
this but the whole re-organisation process over four years.
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Spin corner. Or how to put a positive gloss on a
potentially negative story.
Complaints made about KCC services are
up by 17 per cent with 2,394 formally recorded in 2008-09.
Bad? Not so far as KCC is concerned,
judging by its view outlining the details of the data in a
committee report:
"It is easy when analysing complaints to assume that an
increase or decrease in the number of complaints received reflects
a change in the standard of service provided but it is not as
straightforward as this. An overall increase in complaints could
indicate that a Directorate welcomes complaints and views them as a
positive tool for improving services and that people are well
informed about how to make a complaint."
The increase "also reflects the
fact that people are better informed about how to make acomplaint
following the revision of the Complaints, Comments and Compliments
leaflet and its increased availability. We are expecting there to
be an increase in the number of complaints monitored in 2009/10 in
certain business units as we improve how we give information to the
public on making a complaint and improve our recording."
Malcolm Tucker, eat your heart
out.
Read the full report
here
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Thursday, November 26 2009