[Closed] Your local council project fails

Well a whole load of Edinburgh schools had to be closed for emergency remedial works as in one of them a wall fell down and it turned out the brickies for the whole lot didn't know how to build walls.

You've really got to put in some effort to achieve 1200 issues in one building.

How is this even possible?

Welsh Assembly more than local council, but google.  Circuit  of Wales.

A £430m project to build a race track in the middle of no where.

They managed to con a few million out of us in development costs, had 3 proposals turned down and finally collapsed with £30m of debt.

They promised despite the massive cost it could turn a profit by nicking MotoGP from Silverstone and create about 2000 jobs or something.

To hive an idea of how crooked their plan was - Silverstone, which is, you know, kind of famous and has long contacts in place with F1 and MotoGP can’t turn a profit and was also for sale for a number of years for £33m, but even at that they couldn’t find a buyer.

The WA has form for this, not far from BPW was once a massive dry ski slope with lifts and everything, it closed after a year at a massive cost, sadly they pulled down the lifts long before anything had thought of BPW.

Woking council has borrowed half a billion or so, with no repayments starting before thirty years, so they can build a massive tower, and  turn the town into Croydon. This is on top of the leisure centre that has always lost money, the new school that opened late because it was falling apart, or my favourite, the (now gone) swimming pool on the first floor, that leaked, a lot. Oh, and unsurprisingly, Woking has one of the highest council taxes in the country.

You have to go a long way to beat Edinburgh city council.  Schools as mentioned above ( although that was PFI)

The trams

The statutory notice scandal - now 20 years.  MY own case is now in its 16th year without being resolved and losses to the council of 2 million just on my building.

The mix of arrogance, incompetence, corruption and hubris is very nasty

Whilst not on the same scale as the examples above, the one that immediately springs to mind is the "B of the bang" sculpture outside the City of Manchester stadium. It was stunning too.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/B_of_the_Bang

Highland Council.

Roads.

Most depressing is the fact that we used to be quite good at roads.  Maintenance was done before they fell apart.

Northamptonshire CC analysis in The Times and the first LA for many years to declare poor finances under s114 of the Local Government Finance Act

Uselesshippy - do you mean this development?

https://www.getsurrey.co.uk/news/surrey-news/victoria-square-everything-thats-happened-13614193

I think every council fails to understand development, despite years of 'practice'. Ours is the leisure centre that refuses to be built. The plans continually get chipped away and the longer the delay, the less money the council has to fund it.

http://melkshamnews.com/2018/09/12/campus-is-behind-schedule-over-budget-but-wiltshire-council-pledge-commitment-to-delivering-project/

But at least we have some nice paving at the front entrance at a cost of £660k.

http://melkshamnews.com/2017/10/25/market-place-is-finally-finished-and-the-market-is-returning/

I used to work on ‘big projects’ for councils...In my experience they’re rarely equipped to cope with the complexities of a major project. Private sector companies doing project after project can afford to employ dedicated project managers, contract lawyers, project accountants etc, who gain experience as they move from project to project. Councils tend to have rates of pay that can’t compete with that, and you get staff managing projects without this huge team to back them up (if you’re lucky there’s a really good project manager brought in, but not all the ancillary support from others). If they try to buy in support, they get crucified for spending money on consultants (and if they’re really unlucky the council can’t specify their needs well enough to get consultants that actually do what is needed...).

Put the Davids of local government project management up against the Goliaths of the private sector builders, lawyers, finance people...it's not surprising it sometimes (often?) doesn’t end well.

Add into this mix the changing funding situation in local government, where project money gets pulled or stalled and skilled staff don’t know if there’ll be another one to move on to, and local councils are always going to struggle to have the depth of experience and skill that the private sector can cultivate.

I’m not defending incompetence, and that certainly exists, but I think there’s often a handful of overworked and overwhelmed staff struggling to do their best at something they’re not really equipped or supported to do behind these project failures.

<lights touch paper, walks away>

It's an lack of appreciation of jobs and professions such as Civil Engineers and Clerks of Works. Certainly the recent failures in PFI schools in Edinburgh was a lack of oversight off works and poor contractual management.

I'm fairly settled in this opinion as a civil engineer working  in the public sector. Like many of societies current problems, a large part of the solution is a government that mans up to big business and gets tax collection back in order. Thats a route to avoiding public sector cock ups - although of course the public sector is also in knots with inefficiency and procurement nonsense,

If I was boss etc.

Bradford Council failing for the last 30 years to stop Bradford being a shit hole despite it having amazing history, buildings and people

Stockport Council.

Made a big fuss about resurfacing an existing farm track (which was a bit rough but great for the MTB) into a 'cycle friendly lane.  Was as smooth as the M1 until autumn, then turned in to a brown mush about 2" deep.  They then scraped the top off and it was fine.  Since re-surfaced with loose shale.  Taken another 12 months to finish it.  Lets see what autumn brings this year.

I use it regularly on my off road training route (Alan Newton Way).  Fortunately, the council learned from this, and re-surfaced the Middlewood Way in a suitable surface, as that was very boggy last winter.

Local parish council and a new skate board park.

£50k grant, so money not a problem. Started the 8 week project in January 2018. Still not finished. So all the local children, in all that great summer weather could just stand around looking at a building site.

All the fault of the weather(!) and the contractors, apparently.

I think you're bang on there Hannah.

What about a central (or regional) pool of expertise which local council's can submit into? E.g. 'We want a new leisure centre/ school/ town centre, this is the land we have available, this is the money we can afford, what can you give us/ how can we make it work?' Central pool could contain a mixture of employed staff and consultants on a drawn-down as needed basis. Proposals come back, if the local council vote to go ahead, project team is assigned to deliver and cash is ring-fenced. Unrealistic proposals (from council members) get binned before anyone at the council can get too emotionally attached to them. Councils save money by only paying for the expertise when it's needed, instead of having full time employees trying to manage projects.

Hampshire CC for putting up those “looking after your roads” signs then chucking wet tar over the top then and then spraying loose stones randomly then pissing off to let vehicles “embed” the stones in and creating shiny cart tracks ideal for wet slippy surfaces.

Other than that Fareham BC for existing 🤪💩

Woking council has borrowed half a billion or so, with no repayments starting before thirty years, so they can build a massive tower, and turn the town into Croydon. This is on top of the leisure centre that has always lost money, the new school that opened late because it was falling apart, or my favourite, the (now gone) swimming pool on the first floor, that leaked, a lot. Oh, and unsurprisingly, Woking has one of the highest council taxes in the country.

TBH when I read the post it sounded like Woking 😀

The new Hoe Valley School... etc.  (However many billion spent on flood defences that still puts my house in a high risk area for insurance - even though it never flooded BEFORE)

However it's the sum of the micro fails that the title reminded me of.

The completely non joined up roadworks ... new development of all the new "family homes" where they then discovered they needed electricity... and then discovered they needed water  and then discovered they needed sewerage... etc.  so each time they closed the roads (by the fated leisure centre) and dug them up and laid new only to dig them up again a month later ???

We get the V&A

Then they put this up to obscure the view ... ffs

There's a proposed 'retail park' for Peterlee that'll have a big Lidl, a Home Bargains, something else that's generic and a drive through KFC on the site of the (now demolished and relocated to a room in the leisure centre) library and a load of trees were cut down to clear the land. The thought that someone, somewhere thinks this is a Good Idea makes me sad. There's already a Lidl, Home Bargains is on what's left of the main shopping street, there's another generic whatever it is and there's a drive through Mc-****ing-Donalds already. Peterlee doesn't need somewhere else for people to spend their non-existent money. The laughable thing is is that it's not even going to be easy to get to, so the usual boring Sunday retail park offenders won't bother to use it.

The place is a ****ing shithole that needs stuff to do to lift the place up, not places to shop.

birky -  abit like some people complained the V&A was a waste of money so the council decided to hide it.  But then inside there's a viewing platform looking up the river with what should be a stunning view obscured by those concrete planks.

Although not on a huge scale, a junction onto a main road that worked fine so the council changed the roads to introduce some stoppages, slowing traffic, increasing pollution and encouraging drivers to take a short cut that passes a primary school.

I'm not Woking, rather Guildford but close enough to wonder what they are on with the Victoria redevelopment, at a time when town centre retail is dying on its arse. And Guildford's planning its own version with the railway station development.

In recent times we've also had the container village - rumoured to have cost > £1M

Not quite sure what the gripe is with the Hoe Valley School, there is / was a desperate need for more school places so a new school was needed; it might have become a bit of a vanity project thereafter but delays were not just in the funding and build but also in formal approvals at central government (I followed some of this because if it had stayed on track it might well have been the school of choice for my kids). And if it is used in the same way as the Weydon facilities in Farnham it will be a great resource for the local community.

I look at the failures of private enterprise over recent years in so many areas and then look at Local Government and think there's probably less chance of an LA getting things completely wrong than a plc.

Bradford Council failing for the last 30 years to stop Bradford being a shit hole despite it having amazing history, buildings and people

I hear they've filled the hole in with a big shopping centre now 😛

Reading above re: Woking, I'm glad I never went back after leaving for uni. It was a hole in the 90s, and with the few visits I've had to the town centre since my opinion hasn't changed.

For my two-pence, I'll nominate Richmond council for the Twickenham Riverside redevelopment debacle. Oct 2017 (after 3-4 years) - final plans published, cue public uproar. Oct 2018 - planning withdrawn, still no idea on what they are going to do...

Another Woking council classic, the canopy outside the station. They thought it would be nice to have a covered canopy outside the station, until they finished and discovered it was quite dark, so they spent more on lighting, then realised this was bad environmentally, so spent more on solar panels, which blocked out more light, etc.

A few years, and about five million later, it was decided, it attracted "undesirable people" hanging out under it, so more money was spent taking it down.

A small scale Bristol one. Road under a grade 2 listed footbridge needs repair. The bridge is borderline on height for the vehicles that use it. Road repair raises height of road, consequently lorry hits bridge.

A stupid situation that should never have happened, but simple enough to fix right? Nope, it's coming up on 3 years and this bridge is still closed despite the parts for repair having been donated.

http://greenironbridge.com

Our group is a good way to raising the £450k for a pumptrack.

Planning is impossible. There are 27 documents about the process and not one pulls together all the information you need.  So now we've got to wait 6 months, by which time some of the funding will have timed out, to check impact on nesting birds.  It's on established tennis courts sorrounded by football pitches.  Took 8weeks for permission to dig holes to check porosity.

I’m not defending incompetence, and that certainly exists, but I think there’s often a handful of overworked and overwhelmed staff struggling to do their best at something they’re not really equipped or supported to do behind these project failures.

This so much.

No-one goes to work thinking 'today, I am going to stuff it up as best I can'.

That said, I think there is institutionalised attitudes, heavily bureaucratic systems, unionised reactions and processes as well as Joe public getting on your case the moment you don't meet the impossible expectations they have....This leads to a very difficult culture to work within at times.

Only small scale but years back all the local kids campaigned to get a skate park. The local council finally built 2 interconnected bowls.

It rained.
They filled with water.
We then had 2 stagnant ponds for a couple of years until they finally filled them in.

The spanking new Woking Sportsbox looks quite nice - I've watched it being built from the train to work and back.  Nowhere near Woking though.

Be interesting to see how that goes, if the other sports centre's never made any money.  Different focus, I guess.

Anyone know much about that one?

Our group is a good way to raising the £450k for a pumptrack.

Planning is impossible.

check impact on nesting birds

Pretty sure you'll disagree, but this is actually quite heartening to hear, and made me smile. We're in the middle of raising £6m to turn an old outdoor pool into a new outdoor pool. We began in earnest in 2012, we initially applied for planning almost 2 years ago, and we haven't even been in front of the planning committee yet. And in between all that, we've put in thousands upon thousands of voluntary hours, pulled in all kinds of favours, begged, borrowed and whatever else.

We've had wintering birds holding us up. We've had to do exploratory concrete assessments. We've engaged tens and tens of regulatory bodies. The list goes on and on and on.

And seemingly, we have a local authority that, on the face of it, is determined to scupper everything we've done.

So, this isn't going to help you much, but it's nice to know that we're not the only ones facing this stuff!

Good luck with it all! :o)

Only small scale but years back all the local kids campaigned to get a skate park.

See below for even smaller.  I've posted this before, but it pops into my head quite regularly.  Amazing piece of design failure.  At least it's weather proof.  Probably the funnest thing you can do on it is run and slide down it on trainers when it's wet.

[img] [/img]

Just to balance my earlier post, here's a success (well, it seems to have gone down well, and was opened in time for the summer hols):

http://melkshamnews.com/2017/09/27/melkshams-fifth-skate-park-officially-opens/

Didcot Gateway.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-oxfordshire-35540249

A vanity project planned for opposite the station, the most important thing being the story hotel that would be an importand feature. Sadly no hotel wanted to be involved. There are a couple of hotels but they are out by the A34 and are convenient for Milton Park and Harwell which are the only things that really draw people to this area.
Ask any councillor why we need this and they say it is vital to DIdcot's growth that they have a hotel.

These are the same people who did the Orchard Centre Stage 2 developement that started by knocking down the public loos next to the bus stop and left Didcot with no toilets for over a year.
Now the hotel project looks doomed the council are saying they could build flats there but they've been told there is no chance of doing that without a major change as there is not enough parking available. The nursery school doesn't know when it will be knocked down but as the council haven't started on the new replacement they are in no panic. The railway Staff Club and the carpet warehouse that are to be demolished to make room for the mini multistorey carpark for the hotel and serviced offices are expanding their business and looking forward to the compensation when the compulsory purchase order comes through. It just goes on and on.

We won't talk about the new road and bridge into the new developement on the old powerstation site, but at least they are planning to have driverless auto pods on the roads shuffling between the rail station and Milton Park. That should be fun.

Swansea Council ripped up the town centre and made it one-way, widening the roads to allow long bendy buses to be used. These buses were on the roads for only a few years, caused three deaths and were pulled from use. The city centre now looks like a building site as all of those roads are being ripped up again. It’s been going on for over a decade and will continue for a couple of years.

(The one-way system meant that for a while I couldn’t work out how to drive around the city, despite having lived here all of my life. It was a nightmare for visitors. )

A few years, and about five million later, it was decided, it attracted “undesirable people” hanging out under it, so more money was spent taking it down.

and the 'undesirable people' went back into the pedestrian tunnel??

This sign (allegedly) cost us £90K

[img] [/img]

Though it did almost seem worth it when somebody made snow cock and balls next to it last winter.

 Our group is a good way to raising the £450k for a pumptrack.

In kirkcudbright we have been waiting for a skatepark/Bmx Park for years, I remember talking about it back before 2000ish but it’s still in the planning stage, we do however have a recent fancy as **** conversion of our town hall into a **** useless £3million (+overspend of £400k) art gallery, yeah....... that’s just what the town needs......dicks.......**** dicks the lot of them

 Our group is a good way to raising the £450k for a pumptrack.

Our council was extremely co-operative and collaborative in the construction of the new velosolutions pump track which opened at the start of this year. It's been universally lauded as a success.

Only problem is that it's at the arse end of the worst, roughest,  council estate in the town and this effectively bars its use to all the  other kids in the town who don't want their bikes nicked or their heads kicked in.

A great idea, well executed with only one tiny flaw.

We have the Wokingham Regeneration Project - currently killing the town's shops, replacing a green space with an Aldi and a Hotel, and putting the council £600M+ in debt.

The spanking new Woking Sportsbox looks quite nice – I’ve watched it being built from the train to work and back.  Nowhere near Woking though.

Be interesting to see how that goes, if the other sports centre’s never made any money.  Different focus, I guess.

Anyone know much about that one?

That is the new Hoe Valley School - runs as a school in the day and then the sports facilities are available for the community to use in the evenings. Works very well with the Weydon in Farnham, loosely similar even with the Surrey Sports park which was / is mainly the University sports complex but dual purposed into a public use as well.

Nowhere near Woking though.

Less than 2 miles from Woking town centre, Goldsworth Park, Westfield, Old Woking..... how close do you want it to be? And if the NIMBIES ever shut up about the green belt* then there will be loads more new houses between Woking and Guildford along the A320 corridor putting the site in the middle of somewhere.

* I don't 'want' to lose the green belt either but we clearly need housing - about 5000 iirc - and it has to go somewhere.

Northamptonshire council spent £53m building a new HQ which they then sold and now lease from the new owner

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-northamptonshire-43046692

Down here in the shires our local town council wants to borrow £30m over 40 years to build a new civic complex with theatre on the promise it will bring 3 times more revenue than the current complex - mainly poxy tribute bands and amateur dramatics. Meanwhile core services are being cut.  The problem is it only increases capacity by about 20 seats and it doesn't include the cost of the existing facility which will lie dormant and fall into decay next door - they rejected the proposal to refurbish the existing facility and want to build over the civic car park instead. Basically its a vanity project for the local head gammon and he's now in a froth because he's been holding meetings on the QT were decisions have been taken and he's been rumbled. There's now been a second poll  of those in the parish who will have to pay for it that rejected it 4:1.

<div class="bbp-reply-author">jeff
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We have the Wokingham Regeneration Project – currently killing the town’s shops, replacing a green space with an Aldi and a Hotel, and putting the council £600M+ in debt.

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I had John Redwood knock on my door to ask if we'd vote for whoever was stood behind him for the council and how proud he was that the councils budget balancing still left it as one of the few councils with weekly bin collections.

I was polite-ish, the door didn't actually slam.

Talking about bin collections ... monthly in some areas?  I despair.

Talking about bin collections … monthly in some areas?  I despair.

Swings and roundabouts. Didn't Powys see a 14% increase in recycling rates during the trial? And they're already a long way ahead of the national average (66%, the target for the rest of the UK is 50% by 2020!). The reporting on it made it sound like the council was desperate when I think they should be applauded.

I despair that it isn't more common. I've got relatives in Norway and their normal is 1 small supermarket carrier bag of waste per week for a family!

I’ve got relatives in Norway and their normal is 1 small supermarket carrier bag of waste per week for a family!

But that isn't down to local councils as much as national legislation.

Here every council picks and choses what to recycle... as in some bottles but not the tops (for example).

So there is no way for say national supermarkets to make a universally recyclable bottle even if they wanted to.

In Norway you have the machines you can feed bottles and get money out and these are universal and so only bottles that can be recycled through them are sold.

Really?  Mine are collected fortnightly and with my refuse it's a quarter full, that could be reduced further if I made more effort.  Do you know if the doorstep food waste collection is nationwide?

One bag a week is good going for a family!

One bag a week is good going for a family!

It's a bit like Scotland, but less developed. So they don't do landfill like we do as that would spoil it.

If it's recyclable they recycle it, if it rots they compost it, if it burns they incinerate it.  If you want to throw something out, even a bit a bit of old tupperware, then you have to take it to government run thrift shops in case someone else wants it.

Amber valley paid pay over the odds for a plot of land to build a new super duper leisure centre on. Somebody got their sums wrong and it's now just a stoned up makeshift car park.

@ Reformedfatty, I drive under the Iron bridge twice a day at least. It is a perfect example of council ineptitude. They can’t even organise a couple of road signs to warn drivers!

Chester and Cheshire, Police Hq and police station in city walls, they then closed both down and moved police station to a council estate a mile plus out of city centre, and police hq to windsford about 15 miles, and surprise surprise built themselves a new HQ on the site of tthe old police station with ajoining hotel, became to expensive to run so then partly leased to office users.

City centre council offices closed, tax office closed down,theatre closed and library closed site going to be redeveloped with House of fraser as lead tenant, they went bust, now all empty. Theatre moved to old odeon cinema site along with library, that most residents hate, all at huge cost for conversion.

2 bus and one coach station closed, buses and coaches moved to a costly open sided bus station, with limited capacity to park buses and no side to bus station like a wind tunnel, but a grass roof, thats now half dead.

Huge number of traffic lights on all roundabouts that cause huge congestion from drivers going through on red, when theyre broke, little congestion, cost millions to design and get working, and thy still dont do the job.

Add into this mix the changing funding situation in local government, where project money gets pulled or stalled and skilled staff don’t know if there’ll be another one to move on to, and local councils are always going to struggle to have the depth of experience and skill that the private sector can cultivate

I’m 3yrs and £1m into a £17m project. ‘Someone’ with access to all the information contained on a single line of a spreadsheet has pulled the next 2yrs of funding with the expectation that this can be managed.

Contracts, teams, legal agreements, survey data, planning, everything is now under threat that I’ve carefully managed.

Some of these examples are shocking but it’s a loaded dice for the teams delivering them. 😔

Lots of examples of nonsense from councils here but nothing comes close to Edinburgh

Tram line?  a billion pounds for a few miles of tramline that is rubbish as it neither interfaces with trains properly like Manchester and leaves you a walk of a few hundred yards outside the airport that is not under cover. - allthis when we actually already have a trainline that crosses the airport and a great bus service.  Its not even the basis for a proper comprehensive tram system being so badly designed and implemented

Stat notice scandal - incredible cover up by the council.  cost to the council so far many many millions and cost to Edinburgh residents individually millions more.  16 years I have been in dispute with them.   2 million costs to the council / taxpayer on my building alone.;   Don't thy know who they are dealing with?  😉  They will not settle with me because they know I will only accept a fair settlement, they know if they try to impose a settlement I will go to court an they know if it gets to court I will call officers of the council as witnesses and I can prove these officers lied.

Thus all they are doing is kicking it into the long grass until these officers have retired.

The corruption is obvious, the cover up extensive, the costs enormous

Eastbourne and Sovereign Harbour/Tarmac and the EA.  SH were supposed to migrate by truck the shingles that built up on the harbour wall in the early 00’s.  Massive falling out over something and for years the good people of SH and Norman’s Bay sufferers shingle erosion as the build up wasn’t migrated.  Though the good people of SH were paying at least 100 a year each per flat/house towards the non existent migration.  I wonder where that went?

Lately SH was going to upgrade and improve the shopping facilities at the Harbour (they’re money) but Eastbourne decided the town centre needed a revamp out of council money and because this will take trade from SH, they’ve apparently shelved plans.  Brilliant timing.

We also had a dual carriage way (3miles or so) all built and connected to roads but due to arguments over maintenance ownership it wasn’t used for 2-3 years!

Leeds:

A few years ago, my local leisure centre was getting bit tired (built early 1970s) so the council spent a bit (couple of millionish I think) on a new roof and a total refurbishment, new gym equipment etc. Not a bad job done, and probably reasonable value for money for what they got.

Then a year or two after that, funding came available for 2 x brand new leisure centres - not sure of the exact source, but it had to be spent on building two new leisure centres for whatever reason.

At that time the council was "hung" with a small (2 - 3 member) local interest "party" holding the balance of power. They represented our locality. Anyone care to guess where one of the brand new leisure centres went? Yep, right on top of the newly demolished leisure centre that had just been totally refurbished and re-roofed to give it many years more life..

TJ - mate of mine lives in Lauriston St & does work for the council sent me this

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-scotland-edinburgh-east-fife-42096589

Inquiry into why tram project went over budget goes.....

Indeed trailseeker.  As I said - the mix of corruption, incompetence, and hubris is a really toxic one.  As for the corruption - I have seen emails soliciting bribes.  I know of 3 men who worked for the council who became millionaires off the stat notice scandal and who all were retired off rather than prosecuted despite the clear evidence of corruption

Our group is a good way to raising the £450k for a pumptrack.

Planning is impossible. There are 27 documents about the process and not one pulls together all the information you need.  So now we've got to wait 6 months, by which time some of the funding will have timed out, to check impact on nesting birds.  It’s on established tennis courts surrounded by football pitches.  Took 8 weeks for permission to dig holes to check porosity.

It's never nearly have a mill to build a pump track is it!?

No wonder Claudio can travel the world to build them!

Beat the Street - in Swindon where I used to live and now in Torbay

It's an initiative to get kids active with sensors on lamposts and rewards for collecting them all.

But this is England isn't it. So it is mainly used by parents driving their kids to each lampost. Completely counter productive.

Woking council has borrowed half a billion or so, with no repayments starting before thirty years, so they can build a massive tower, and  turn the town into Croydon.

More than a massive tower, 7 minimum are planned and estimates go to 15+ to meet the housing criteria and not have anyone building in the back garden of Tory Boys, i.e. restrict development to town centre. Plus it fits in with unelected Ray Morgan's plan to turn Woking into Singapore!

Meanwhile it's still unsure if M&S will really move back in to the new shopping part of the development. Toys'R'Us was part of the original plan but they've gone tits up, and now that car park may be demolished (already demolished the fun spiral ramp). Replaced with new car park? or more likely another tower block (and these blocks don't have enough parking and no new facilities, hospitals, schools etc for them).

The new Hoe Valley School… etc.  (However many billion spent on flood defences that still puts my house in a high risk area for insurance – even though it never flooded BEFORE)

Hoe Valley School and the same old faults with it, and then the crap cheapskate crossing on a very busy trunk road where a bridge is really required and guess what?... kids already been run over.

And the flooding. My road gets no flood protection despite flooding and on national news, yet Hoe Valley wasn't getting much publicity about flooding but gets massive flood defence scheme. Why? So they can build houses there. I enquired about my area and it's deemed as not a priority as there aren't enough houses affected (or rather, there isn't a new build scheme affected, so why should the council care if a dozen or more houses get flooded).

Have we done Bury council yet?

one of the few bits of dedicated bike lane in gt Manchester, been there for a good 20yrs - and they dig through it for a f***ing drive through KFC complete with paint to enforce a give way that wasn't there before - a couple of weeks later they put a poster next to it for 'I will if you will' a local scheme to encourage healthy activity...

Prestwich regeneration - they have a design for dedicated bike lanes (that will link to the ones mentioned above) and pedestrian areas to make it safe to use - a few businesses on Bury new rd itself moan and the whole thing is redesigned to incorporate parking spaces. we get painted bike lanes. In a few years time the Beelines design (boardman's vision for walking & cycling) will rip this up and put a dedicated bike lane there.

we have serious lack of housing - Bury want to build on green belt despite there being 7 private golf courses within a 4 mile radius within the existing urban confine (Prestwich, Whitefield, Stand, Unsworth, Blakeley, North Manchester, Manchester and Heaton Park the public one, look on google maps, it would be hilarious if it was't depressing)

Do you know if the doorstep food waste collection is nationwide?

People collect your left over beans?

It's definitely not nationwide. What do they do with it?

Our group is a good way to raising the £450k for a pumptrack

I'm in the wrong business. I could build the bestest pumptrack in the whole wide world for less that a tenth of that (and still make 50% profit).

Our local council has recently merged with another (same thing happened all over Norn Iron) in an effort to streamline and save costs. The amount of money spent on rebranding these new councils was ridiculous (so much so that plans for a trail centre in my local forest were scrapped to pay for ***ing stationery). It's not all bad news though, they have done a great job tarting the crap out of all the local roundabouts - with sculptures, big rocks and flowers.

If it’s recyclable they recycle it

In danger of going a bit off-topic but what is and isn't recyclable is a moot point. Posh Sainsbury's taste the difference meat trays for instance are black because it looks better than white and hides all the blood and juice. They make them black by adding carbon - probably soot extracted from VW emissions. Nothing wrong with that, but the recycling centre uses some sort of visual analysis beam to work out what sort of plastic an item is made of, and the beam doesn't get reflected back enough from black trays. So it's just the automation process that buggers the recycling, not the actual recyclability itself. Crisp packets have metal sprayed on the film which makes the individually recyclable bits too difficult to separate. There aren't that many recycling centres around the country.

The spanking new Woking Sportsbox looks quite nice – I’ve watched it being built from the train to work and back.  Nowhere near Woking though.

Be interesting to see how that goes, if the other sports centre’s never made any money.  Different focus, I guess.

Anyone know much about that one?

i'm going there tonight with eldest.  The YAC are using it whilst the spectrum's being fixed, so interested to see what it's actually like..

Less than 2 miles from Woking town centre, Goldsworth Park, Westfield, Old Woking….. how close do you want it to be?

Yep, fair enough, I looked it up on the map after I posted and it was closer in than I thought  it was.  Seems like it's further out of town on the train.  I was comparing it to the one a few minutes walk from the centre which someone said can't turn a profit.  Sounds like a great idea, sharing it with the school.  Great for the school, anyway!  Hope it goes well.  Cheers for the extra info.

Seems like it’s further out of town on the train.

That's because on the train you're into all the lovely green belt with big houses and lots of land, makes it seem like it's miles from civilisation and therefore sacrosanct.

Where really it's almost equidistant between the two biggest population centres in Surrey - combined population >10% of the whole of Surrey.

Makes perfect sense to build more houses there, we have roads, hospitals, schools, railways, etc...... if only it wasn't in someones backyard.

<p>@Perchy is that Wishaw then? Always wondered about that one...</p><p></p><p>@TJ Pretty sure the covered walkways extends out to the trams. Which, incidentally are pulling a profit and are actually on the way to getting the Granton line finished at last. Dalmeny line and Edinburgh Gateway is also much a muchness, fine of you're coming from Fife or the City Centre but otherwise useless from anywhere else in the country. At least trams can bypass Corstorphine. </p><p>But yeah, that project threw a lot of ideas under the bus for want of decent management.</p>

Our pumptrack in Edinburgh was less than that for the track, but there may be other things on the site that cost money.

I could write and essay on how various Welsh councils squandered the money they put up for MTBing 5 years ago, £6m in total, half went to build BPW which is fair enough, the rest was meant to create 100k of new trails shared between Cwmcarn and Afan, in actual fact they used it to build a small glass roof for Afan cafe (it’s about 3x5m and cost a fortune) extend the car park at Cwmcarn (and at the same time make it Pay and Display, used to be free) erect a massive rusty metal MTB rider in the middle of a roadabout down the road.

As for new trails...

Blade - funded by the wind farm people.

Penydd - actually an existing trial and rebuilt by NRW after they had to clear the trees.

Cafal - built after a big protest as Caerphilly council doubted it was needed so close to BPW and actually cancelled the project.

Pedalhounds - another existing unofficial / race only DH track built too far from the nearest accessible uplift point and largely unused - it’s a bit too gnar for a lot of people who ride Cafal and too hard to get to on DH bikes (you’ve got to pretty much ride the entire Cafal XC track). I’d guess on a good weekend, when it’s open, it sees maybe 2-3 rider.

Most recently they were given £160k for Cwmcarn to help with walking trails and MTB trails. For reference (a long time ago) the original DH track cost £80k to build, even with inflation and NRW pitching in your think you’d get a whole new trail yeah? Nope, 3k of MTB trail, some new signs for the walking trails and a ‘Welcome Zone’ whatever that is - perhaps it’s to replace the the new wall / signage they put up at the start of forest drive about a year ago and took down again a few weeks later.

@Perchy is that Wishaw then? Always wondered about that one…

Yep. It’s a cracking track and everyone agrees that it’s a massive success, but if it had been more central in the town it could have been so much more.

Meanwhile, there’s an abandoned red ash football pitch at the sports centre in the middle of town which would have been a perfect spot for a pump track what withthe car park and the cafe and the floodlights.

Cost £250000 according to the council

Ah, Wales and investments in recreation, MTB projects, renovation of the valleys, with EU funding... and then Brexit happens 😉

I give you Sunderlands new bridge. Going from nowhere in particular to nowhere in particular.

Wow, the Daily Mail is strong in this thread.

Anybody mentioned Bristol's arena yet?

Last I heard it was going to float above the city suspended from a number of hot air balloons.

Squirrelking - the Edinburgh tram airport bit is exposed to the wind and rain.  Why they didn't put another couple of hundred yards of track so it was right next to the terminal in I cannot fathom.  So tourists first experience of Edinburgh is to walk a couple of hundred metres exposed to the weather behind a multistory car park.  Its really not good.
Amsterdam airport to the trains - just go down an escalator.  No need to go outside.  Geneva - OK you do go outside for about 10m IIRC then back inside down an escalator to the trains.  Edinburgh - walk right to the end of the terminal -go  outside then a couple of hundred yards outside with an inadequate part covered walkway to get on a tram from which you cannot get on to a train going south without either two changes or crossing a major road and then walking down another part covered walkway with no disabled access.  ant a train west or north - first you have to go east and south for half an hour to change  to the train which then spends covers almost the same route again.   Couple this with the appauling cycleways criss crossing the tramlines at shallow angles and at one point the cycleway actually runs between th tram tracks!
so much money to have  be spent to give such a poor result is dreadful when with a little more thought and care it could have been so much better.  Especially given the fact a dozen trains an hour actually cross the airport estate and another dozen are only half a mile away

the granton line is many years from being built if it ever is.  Huge issues in actually putting it in place and even thn its rubbish as ther will be no circular link so to get from Granton to the airport ( which is a few miles west of Granton) you will have to firstly go a couple of miles east, then a couple of miles south, only then will you go west.  As for profitability - only if you ignore the costs of building it - ie fares are just about covering the running cost but will never ever recoup the building costs nor cover the millions that is going to be paid in compensation to all the cyclists killed and injured by the appalling design of the cycleways

30 years ago councils had surveyors architects and engineers, now we have out sourcing to the private sector. Pile on cuts to services and loss of experienced skilled staff and you end up with staff that procure and manage contracts with every conversation, advice and task billed for with a consultants taxi meter.

Are people who work at councils derided like teachers, as people who can't? Or are they public servants that have a genuine desire to serve communities, children, the elderly, disadvantaged and everyone?

Councils work to the direction of councillors elected by the public. If it is so rotten, then do something about it. Get involved, make a stand and have a voice, that is democratic way. Oh, you prefer just to moan and be apathetic.

Some of these make Aberytwyth’s £16000 rope ‘labyrinth’ look pretty good value.

They turned a bowling green into this, and spend £2500 per year to maintain it.

Tomaso

In the case of Edinburgh its incompetence from the councillors and arrogance from the officers.  I know of many issues where the officers are telling lies to the councillors.  There is also corruption running right thru the council.

I have given councillors direct proof of lies from officers and soliciting of bribes and nothing has been done about it.  The issue being that if the council accept the illegal actions occurred then they cannot recoup the monies from the people who had building work done under stat notice and would have to pay millions back to the people that have been scammed.  so they simply deny the illegality happened

the council have hidden evidence of the illegal actions from the police and spend their time attacking the whistleblowers and spend huge sums avoiding any cases getting to court.

Its a toxic mix of arraogance, hubris, incompetence adn corruption.  All parties bar the tories and greens are complicit and the greens and tories are a small minority so the cover up continues.  Its bigger than Poulson / T Dan smith