Been a few weeks since my last post, partly due to spending a lot of time dealing complaints about failed refuse and recycling collections and the appalling lack of grass cutting in some areas and issues with council housing and the council failure to answer the phone.

For the fourth year running of this unitary authority the path between Hudspeth Crescent and Front St in Pity Me and the path running across to Finchale/Old Pit have not been cut back despite repeated requests from residents and councillors to the council. This has now been raised with head of service and I have asked today for the third year in a row to see the cutting schedule for the area, which I have asked for each year and never been given, leading me to believe that there isn’t one and that actually the new council is simply responding when the number of complaints hits a certain level or not at all in this case so far.

It is strange that a department with so many tiers of management can’t deal with simple things like scheduling a path for cutting back. Once again I expect that there will be excuses like the weather, or agency staff shortages. What they can’t blame this on is cuts in their budget because they have already told me in the last few months that this is simply not the case.

Yes there used to be some problems with the old City Council but things did get done when you asked, and pretty quickly too. It is also clear that this is a TWO TIER COUNCIL. Up in Chester-le-Street or over in Langley Park, the grass is being cut properly, so why can’t we have the same service in Durham?

So much of Labour’s promise of raising service levels to the highest in the County with the new authority.

It is also clear that this isn’t just the council ganging up on Pity Me residents, the grass cutting in Witton Gilbert this year has been even worse and there are problems across Newton Hall too.

Time for a chat with the Director I think.

OK rant over, but on a different note if anyone is still having any issues with bin collections please do let me know as there have been a lot of changes of late and a lot of complaints about failed collections.

Finally, if anyone has  housing or council tax benefit issues let me know. In the last few weeks there have been days and even a full week according to one resident where it has simply been impossible to get through to the council. I checked this and it was true, simply a message saying “We are too busy and are going to hang up on you now” or words to that effect. So I called four other North East councils and got through to all of their benefits departments in less than a minute – so any excuses from our Labour-run Council are unacceptable.