A reply to me being in the news!

What a joy!

For a small while, nobody had said anything to me about me being in the news, while i had enjoyed being in the newspaper (the story for which, you can read by clicking here) i had kind of thought that the issue had been laid to rest and nothing was going to be done about it, only yesterday, i was proved wrong.

During a chat about it, my mother happend to mention to me that in the following weeks newspaper, my name had been in the paper again. Turn's out another local resident feels the same way.

We've been hit over the past few years with rent hikes. They try to justify it by saying that the national adverage of rent has gone up and the size of where we are living, yet the forget to mention at this point that we still have single glazed windows and on energy effiency, these appartments are rated just above the worst that you could possibly get. Like, it's almost pointless them having walls.

Yet again last week, i recieved a letter off the council telling me that the rent was going up and that i had no choice in this. The amount we pay for the halls to be cleared has gone up to over £5 a week, which let me explain what happens every TWO weeks. A man comes out, they brush the hallway and by brush i mean, they bang a stick with a few brissles against every wall while going up and down the stairs, then come in with a mop and literally, flood the hallway, with no notice of a wet floor and the floors having no grip at the best of times, it's an accident waiting to happen. So we still have to pay now over £10 every two weeks for that to happen, it's awful.

Not only that, but as this other resident pointed out, we have still been blanked by the council, we are still not getting ANY work carried out on where we live. These single glazed, often drafty windows, look set to stay in. These storage heaters look even more certain to be staying in, since none of these buildings have a gas supply. The missing tiles in the hallway remain missing and broken items in the hallway (Windows and lights) remain broken.

This IS beyond a joke now, West lancashire council NEED to get a grip on this situation and now is their time to react.

Their reply to my story was that they were planning in the next financial year wether to carry work out on these places or to leave them. The reply to this other resident? "The council listen when residents raise issues".

I call BULLSHIT on this.

So while it's snowing yet again here (and it is snowing as i type this), i'm sat here freezing cold and with no other alternative than to pay through the nose for useless heating and wrap up in extra layers at night for when the storage heaters are spent.

I'll be keeping this updated and we'll see where this goes.

I do want to make one point very clear on this though.

Allowing the news to go public about my contact with the council and this situation hasn't been an easy decision. I do not regret the decision as only positive can come from it, but when you are left fighting against a brick wall, it's time to look at other ways to win the battle.

As the photographer said to me "The council listen more when a story is in the news, they don't like bad press and tend to do more when a story goes public". While it is only 1 way to get through to them, it's not the only option. Should the council still refuse to do anything, i'm prepaired to take other options.