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Pouring cold water on the idea of saintly caretakers
• A WORD on directly employed caretakers… I’m not sure if contract caretakers would be better or worse than the situation now.
What I do know is that in my experience council caretakers are not all as saintly as New Journal correspondents like to paint them, though. As always, there are exceptions.
As I write our communal staircase is a filthy, depressing hole of an entrance to our homes. If it is still that way tomorrow I will do, as before, and clean it properly myself.
Communal stairs need daily cleaning but in Camden they are cleaned weekly if we are lucky. The caretakers use a half-baked worn-out mop method and cold water.
In the past long-handled scrubbing brushes and rubber-bladed wiping implements were issued with sweet-smelling detergents, so why aren’t the caretakers using them these days?
Our rubbish bins and areas are in a putrid state (through poor organisation of rubbish management). They are all fitted with lids which are never closed so that flies are all over them. My elderly neighbour’s window overlooks this mess which surely must be a health and safety hazard/ crime.
In recent months a female caretaker arrived as a temp. She stood out – so marvellous was the job she did – cleaning everything in sight. But she must have been told to “cool it” as after a few weeks she went on the familiar “go-slow”, going missing or sitting around the garden, gossiping, drinking tea and having a ciggie.
A neighbour experienced threatening behaviour and bullying by two full-time council caretakers (not temps) after she complained about their activities and lack of cleaning.
There are layers of managers and staff in the district housing offices who are full of excuses as to why proper (normal) maintenance and deep cleaning can’t be done, so I was pleased when Labour was replaced by the Liberal Democrat/ Tory alliance. But nothing has changed. The council management of our grubby public realm and estates (councillors and officers) is non-existent. Camden Council is “no can do” about every problem-solving suggestion put to it. Experience with the The Tenants’ Federation is frustrating, too, in that it is there mainly for the formal “OK-ing” of officers’ bureaucratic nonsenses which rarely have anything to do with improving quality of life in Camden.
We are young enough to deal with the frustrations. I just feel sorry for the elderly trapped on estates who, (as we all do) pay around £8 per week for low-quality caretaking (and management) out of meagre means-tested pensions.
Name and Address supplied
Come clean
• YOUR reports on plans to sack 25 per cent of estate caretakers shows just how the Liberal Democrats and Tories who run Camden Council regard the most vulnerable in the borough.
Caretakers are local people around during the day who make the public space on the Gospel Oak estate safe, especially for the elderly and young. They are part of the fabric of our community. To get rid of them shows total disregard for local people.
So it is very surprising that our Tory councillors have been so silent on this issue. Do councillors Keith Sedgwick, Lulu Mitchell and Chris Philp support the plans?
If so they should make this plain to the voters. If not we need to know what they intend to do to prevent it happening.
Cllr Philp, who is chair of the housing scrutiny committee, is well placed to do something about these plans. Meanwhile Labour in Gospel Oak will continue to support residents and do all it can to oppose the sacking of caretakers.
Sally Gimson
Chair Gospel Oak
Labour Party
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