Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
All 3 Haringey paddling pools out of action
To save anyone else the same faff we’ve just encountered - please be aware that ALL THREE of Haringey’s paddling pools are currently out of order! All of them were due to open today - but none of them have (and Priory Park is out of action for a longer period). What with Clissold Park also being out of action for potentially the next 6 weeks, it’s not looking good for children’s water play in our local area. (My additional particular irritation is that when I checked on the pools and opening dates literally 2 days ago, they were all still anticipated as opening - hence my fruitless search for cooling down options today…!)
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Justin Guest
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Well, I got a response from Dixie-Ann... 3.5 hour turn around.
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Hi Justin
Thank you for your email regarding the Haringey Lidos. As the new Cabinet member for Placemaking, I am still going through my induction and catching up with outstanding residents' issues during my handover.
Please be assured that I have listed this as an action to follow up on and will come back to you once I have ascertained the departments that would be able to help.
Keep me updated on your resident group and please feel free to send me information or any issues that concern you and local people. I understand your frustrations as outlined in your email, and I won't take them lightly. Please write to me and let me know what is happening in your local area.
Have a great week and I will come back to you within the next week regarding the above query.
Kindest regards
Cllr. Dixie-Ann Joseph
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Permalink Reply by Liz
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I can beat you on speed :)
1 hr after emailing, Marc Jenner had replied and detailed what he has done so far:
"I agree with your concerns regarding the closure of the paddling pools. With record high temperatures, they are a vital service for many of our residents, particularly during the half term break.
On Sunday, I raised the concern with the council and asked for feedback on the rational for the closure and the estimated time for reopening. I will let you know as soon as I receive a response.I have also raised this with the Cabinet Member for Culture and Leisure.Please let me know if there is anything else I can help with.
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Permalink Reply by D Jones
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I emailed my new Green Councillor about an urgent issue, I never got a reply.
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Thanks D. That's all I was asking about. The time for "good lucks" and "settling in" has passed (again for all parties) and I'm now interested in how quickly people are getting responses to their issues. Councillors have powers to put in Members Enquiries that must be treated as high priority. The council's own definition of this is
"Member Enquiries on behalf of constituents are essentially complaints about a service that has been received (or ought to have been received) that a Member is taking up on the resident’s behalf. These require an officer in the service to investigate the service failure and provide a formal response, as they would if the constituent had made a complaint directly to the council on their own behalf."
They can also put in service requests, less urgent, that get things like street light repairs or dumped rubbish sorted out.
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Permalink Reply by Clive Carter
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What are councillors for if not to take that burden of dealing with council departments from us, or have I misunderstood the role?
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Liz, you've put your finger on it!
This is why I've often written that residents should not waste their time emailing staff members or trying to negotiate with employees near the bottom of the council's hierarchy. Some may want to help, but their hands are tied.
Council employees are responsible—not to residents who indirectly pay their wages—but to their immediate managers and so on, up the chain of command.
For example, Events Team bosses ordered parks staff to tear out saplings around the Richard Hope Play Space in FP: young trees, planted by volunteers. They did so, not because they thought the destruction was in residents' interests, but because NatureThugs ordered it. The council's big and busy PR Department followed through, on behalf of the bosses, by dissembling to the Press.
On the other hand, Councillors are responsible to residents. Every four years, residents can either retain them or sack them.
Too often under the previous Administration, Labour Councillors saw their role as representing the council to the residents and not representing residents to the council.
It's been a rough start, but I hope this attitude may change.
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I think *most* council employees understand their role as public servants and want to do their very best for the residents but, as you correctly stated, Clive they are often over ruled by their bosses. I’ve been in meetings where a good and hard working council employee working with residents has been *publicly* chastised for this by someone much higher up the chain. Needless to say, I expressed my disgust at this lack of respect for the staff and their high handed attitude but I think it was a window on what council employees may face daily.
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a good and hard working council employee … *publicly* chastised for this by someone much higher up the chain.
Liz, I think I heard about this local example. Whether or not its the same one I'm thinking of, it was truly bad form and it speaks generally to the quality of some of the managers that Haringey chose to employ, who may be unemployable elsewhere. The management principle is you praise (employees) in public and criticise in private.
In the council there are managers who are kiss-up and kick-down guys and gals, and I can easily think of a few. They may be adored by the Cabinet Members they can flatter but are resented by their "underlings" (who are often better people than their bosses).
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I am with you on this Clive, but I also feel that councilors are not meant to be full time professionals.
I believe they get paid like £10-11k to be a councilor, and more if they take on responsibilities. I am not saying you are suggesting this, but the issue here is not that councilors need to get things done, that is far too micro managing and operational for my mind. It is not good governance. Rather, officers and the council in general should be doing so efficiently, but are not. Councilors will quickly become overwhelmed and burnt out if they become the first line of filtering for all the things we (residents) have a problem with (as in this case here).
The key is a well functioning, efficient civil service bureaucracy supporting councilors in executing the strategy they set out.
Alan Stanton talked in the past about (I believe) failure demand- where the council's failure creates more demand for its services, leading to backlogs and an inability to respond, creating a doom loop of failure (have I got that right?). I fear this is where we are with so many things in Haringey. The service is just not efficient.
An example. I live in a School Street. In order to get an exemption each resident has to apply for an exemption- even though 95-100% of those residents (let's say 80 people) already have a parking permit. The council and every single car owning residents all have to engage in a dance to get the relevant exemptions. (Friction point and failure number 1). These permits (like the parking permits) are valid for only 1 year. The Haringey web sites states clearly "If you have an exemption, it will automatically be renewed unless w...." None of us have had any comms from Haringey saying we need to do anything at this point. All good so far. The end of year one comes around one of my neighbours asks the council whether we need to reapply, or will the exemption will automatically renew. That neighbour is emphatically told to renew (Friction and failure point number 2). So now there is confusion. Many neighbours start calling the council- some possibly go through the process of reapplying. Another 50-80 interactions occur that are unnecessary. That is over 100+ interactions that simply did not need to happen. Multiply that up across all the school streets (34 apparently) in the borough, and add in all the LTNs (3 covering literally thousands of residents - 16k in Bruce Grove alone it seems). Add this up and you have a massive number of interactions that - if replicated - just do not need to happen.
Now, where councilors do need to step up is to set out clear direction, tone and culture- holding senior managers to account, and frankly firing those under performing. Not sure I have heard of anyone being fired from Haringey for poor and under performance?
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JUSTIN you make a lot of good points.
Failure Demand that you (and Alan) mentioned is a concept I brought up almost in passing in my Court filing last December to a Tribunal. This is in connection with our Council's conduct and it has not yet been Decided. Here's part of what I wrote:
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Failure Demand—(AKA, avoidable contact). Haringey Council offers an instructive case in this concept created by occupational psychologist John Seddon.
After being adopted by the UK Cabinet Office as a national indicator of local authority performance, this has become widely applied in the UK public sector.
This is the demand on a service organisation, generated by that organisation’s failure to do something, …
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A wise Councillor who preceded me offered a note of advice when I started: there were three power centres at Haringey: the two Council Party Groups (then) and the Bureaucracy.
The enduring power of the latter organ is little appreciated by outsiders. Staff members see councillors come and go. They enjoy job security unlike anywhere else. Some of them become as contemptuous of elected persons as they are of residents.
And because one Party dominated for decades, things became cosy—too cosy—between the employer (the Council, i.e. Councillors) and their employees. Because of Labour's reluctance to fire anyone, we sometimes end up with councillors pleading with their employees to take action.
Councillors are paid a basic Allowance and this is actually treated as a payment to an employee (!?)
For many reasons, the new Council Green Group have an uphill task.
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D Jones: It does happen.
I sat on three-Member, Member Appeals, where council employees had the right to appeal against their dismissal.
Obviously I'm not going to identify anyone.
I had the impression this avenue was used by relatively junior or low-level staff. I cannot remember any senior employees going through this difficult if not humiliating process.
If a senior employee is removed from their position, then they are sometimes promoted sideways, or sent to another Local Authority with a glowing reference, risking the causing of terrible problems elsewhere. IMO, issuing such References in certain circumstances should be a criminal offence. Those with long memories may remember the few occasions when this reached the Press.
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