Car Parking Procurement Project

I attended a meeting today on The Estate in Chelsea. The Project is there to find someone suitable to run the parking for Affinity Sutton . Its at an early stage, more details will follow over the coming months. The project hopes to have everything in place by January 2014. As part of the process Affinity Sutton will be sending out a survey, asking for your Comments and Opinions. Its essential that we get as many of these back as possible, as we want to make sure we have a parking system in place that reflects the needs of tenants.

Waste Collection - Early Start

Please be advised that the Council has agreed that SITA can start waste collections at 6am(time of leaving the yard) instead of 6.30am for the next few days. This is mainly because some of the vehicles are overheating and breaking down (one vehicle had five breakdowns yesterday). This arrangement will then be reviewed at the weekend.

We ask that you please bear with us during this period of hot weather but in the event that you should have any queries please contact Streetline on 020 7361 3001 orstreetline@rbkc.gov.uk

A Resident Remembers

I read the piece in the Sloane Square magazine with interest and have just one key major correction to the comment on p42 that “It was the first housing estate to have baths,” explains Ian.  “They were in the kitchens. It was a little tin bath and it had a wooden flap.  Some residents still remember them .....”.   What an understatement!  I clearly remember that the bath was a heavy cast metal

(? iron) affair and was the size of a standard bath today.  The hinged flap was a large table work top which extended the full length of the bath (roughly 6x3ft) and protruded slightly to the side facing out to the kitchen.  To the left of the bath/table top would have been the sink and a draining board, giving the length of the kitchen as some 8-9ft.  From there, you went through a door onto the open balcony area where, on one side , there was a toilet and, on the other, a coal cellar and a larder with a mesh grill directly above where the coal would be shovelled.  No refrigerators in those days. ‘Elf and safety - never heard of it! Rumour had it that some residents actually stored their extra coal in the bath if they were not fortunate in renting a shed!

 

On the opposite side of the room to the bath was, at one end, a boiler for hot water which was heated from a fire range stove in the adjoining front room, cupboard space and a gas cooker on four legs.  To fill the bath, you had to manually transfer the hot water from one side of the kitchen to the other - no pipes and taps.  The transfer was done via a largish scoop with numerous trips carrying hot water from one side of the room to the other.  Inevitably, this meant that you bathed in just about the minimum amount of water possible to be able to wet your legs and get a good wash down.  One of the greatest luxuries available to us was a visit to the Chelsea Baths – now the Sports Centre – where they had a number of normal baths and you could luxuriate, very cheaply, in a bath with as much hot water as you liked.  Pure bliss!

 

Heating was provided by the a coal fired ‘range’ in the front room which, during the winter, could be used to cook all meals as it had a large area for cooking pans, its own oven and the above-mentioned boiler linked to the kitchen.   For additional heating, there was an individual grate in each bedroom, fired by coal.  These were very rarely used – mainly when in bed sick during the wintertime.   Lighting to the flat was by gaslight, paraffin oil lamps and candles until shortly after the Word War II ended when electricitywas introduced.

 

How ever did we survive in those days prior to modernisation during the late ‘seventies and early ‘eighties via complete reorganisation of the layout of individual flats to encompass proper bathrooms, central heating and the introduction of entry-phones and lifts, where feasible????  We must have been a hardy lot.

 

David Lloyd

CAR PARKING PERMIT PROCUREMENT TEAM

I have been asked by Affinity Sutton to take part in ' The Car Parking Permit  Procurement Team '. I shall report back with my findings after the meeting on the 18th of July

ROYAL MAIL - REPLY

Dear Mr Henderson

 

Thank you for contacting Royal Mail.

 

I'm sorry to hear about residents in your area receiving mail for other addresses and I can understand that this would cause some concern.

 

Of the huge volumes of letters and packets we handle, very few encounter a problem along their way - but we take every single failure seriously, so I'm sorry that you've had cause to contact us.

 

I fully appreciate the risk to the security of your mail if our postmen and women do not deliver mail to the right address - and the obvious inconvenience this can cause. It's important that our customers have confidence in us to always deliver their mail securely and to a high standard, so I apologise again that we have let you down.

 

To deal with this problem, and based on the information you've provided, I have been able to take the following action:

 

• Logged and reported the full details of your complaint

• Passed these details to the manager of the Delivery Office.

 

The Delivery Office Manager has advised that TNT also deliver mail in this area but as a precaution in case these are items delivered by Royal Mail; he has put quality checks in place to ensure mail is delivered correctly.

 

I would have to advise that you inform the individuals who have contacted you to check the markings on any mail which they receive incorrectly. The envelopes will be clearly marked as delivered by Royal Mail or they will have TNT in bold letters. For items incorrectly delivered by Royal Mail it would be advisable for the individual to contact us themselves, providing us with the address of the incorrectly delivered mail and the date it was delivered. This information would assist the Delivery Manager in his investigations.

 

Once again, please accept my sincere apologies on behalf of Royal Mail for the problem you've had, and our thanks for taking the time to make us aware of this. Please be assured that we take letting our customers down seriously and will use this information to make further improvements.

 

I hope you have found this information useful and that this explanation resolves your enquiry and concludes this matter for you. However if you are unhappy with my response you can contact the Escalated Customer Resolution Team who will re-investigate your complaint. They can be contacted by emailing: customerresolution@your.royalmail.com. Alternatively you can write to: Escalated Customer Resolution Team, Royal Mail, PO Box 466, Plymouth, PL9 7HJ. If you do contact the team please can I ask you to quote your reference number 1-2552386569.

 

Regards

 

Denise Dickinson

Customer Service Advisor