Sunday 3 January 2010

Kent County Council and the mystery of the missing grit

I have had written confirmation via my county councillor that KCC did in fact grit Ramsgate town centre including The Plains of Waterloo (the hill shown in the video on the Saturday morning when it snowed) twice on the 19th December the Saturday morning when it snowed.





This is news to me and everyone else I have spoken to in Ramsgate, sorry about the rather wonky sound track.

We are on the last day of our extended Christmas and New Year break, sorry I have been a bit behindhand posting and replying to comment on the posts here in the last few days, normal service will be resumed soon.

3 comments:

  1. It may have been gritted, in the way that I saw Queen St./Westcliff Road being treated this morning at about 9.30. The gritting truck (coming downhill) clearly exceeding the speed limit and therefore gritting at widely spaced intervals. Does KCC have an optimum speed, or tons per mile specification for application of grit - or a bonus for the driver who can cover the greatest length of route, in the fastest time, with the least salt?

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  2. Another example of a local authority that just fails to admit it got it wrong. In this case KCC; too often TDC. Sack PR officers as they not only fail to admit the blindingly obvious but then put words into Cllr's mouths to issue dubious press releases that are then printed by subservient local papers! No one minds honesty and human error; what is indigestable is 'PR spin'.

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  3. Until two years ago, KCC operated highways services from 12 highways units – one in each borough across Kent – but after reorganisation the services were moved to three depots around the county. The costs of this was £17,000,000!
    And this winter KCC and at least once council I know had not reached any agreement regarding the use of the council's work force in the event of bad weather. The council cannot act without KCC's permission because of insurance.
    On the 18th dec Sevenoaks council sent their crew that had turned up at 5am home on full pay.

    Just remember somehow KCC was rated as a 4 star council by the audit commission.

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Comments, since I started writing this blog in 2007 the way the internet works has changed a lot, comments and dialogue here were once viable in an open and anonymous sense. Now if you comment here I will only allow the comment if it seems to make sense and be related to what the post is about. I link the majority of my posts to the main local Facebook groups and to my Facebook account, “Michael Child” I guess the main Ramsgate Facebook group is We Love Ramsgate. For the most part the comments and dialogue related to the posts here goes on there. As for the rest of it, well this blog handles images better than Facebook, which is why I don’t post directly to my Facebook account, although if I take a lot of photos I am so lazy that I paste them directly from my camera card to my bookshop website and put a link on this blog.