Category Archives: Bristol City Council

HUMAN WAREHOUSING JOY

Derby Street Car Park
Derby Street car park: enough for eight homes?

Plans for eight “temporary accommodation pods” for homeless people in Derby Street Car Park, Redfield have been enthusiastically waved through by councillors on the planning committee bravely tackling ‘The Housing Crisis’ by supporting any old shit for the poor.

“Each unit would be 2.7 metres high, 7.9 metres deep and 3.8 metres wide, providing a total of 24 square metres of floorspace,” explains the planning report. That’s 13 square metres below the Tories’ ungenerous 37 square metre National Space Standard for one bed accommodation then.

Planning officers dodged around this glaring issue by agreeing “the units are small” and then claiming they “offer a better alternative to the proposed residents”. Better than what isn’t stated.

Officers also said that as tenancies via the Salvation Army are limited to two years, the accommodation is temporary and space standards don’t apply. How temporary it will be remains to be seen. Especially as Bristol’s planning department appears to have no means of enforcing their own planning conditions any more.

Why fewer units couldn’t be built that met minimum National Space Standards wasn’t a matter explored by planning officers or councillors.

BRISTOL WASTE: IT’S THE MEDIA’S FAULT!

An article last week in the Nazi Post reporting that the council’s Independent Shareholder Advisor, Fiona Ross, had told the council they need to consider whether they should continue to badly run failing companies, produced a panicked response from Bristol Waste’s latest interim MD Ian “Not Another One” Osborne.

He immediately wrote out to Bristol Waste’s workers explaining there was no problem at the firm whatsoever and that the press had published “an exaggerated story”. Apparently by quoting precisely what the “very concerned” Independent Shareholder Advisor had written in their own report.

This included describing the basketcase waste firm as “a significant drain on scarce [council] resources in terms of time and funding”.

We’ve been told, “anyone with any sense should take notice of Fiona Ross rather than the latest plonker to be handed the top job at Bristol Waste.”

Check the MD’s message to his staff to see how desperate it’s got at the top at Bristol Waste:

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ELDRIDGE, HE BOUGHT THE MOST POINTLESS MILK FLOATS IN THE WEST!

Benny Hill
Latest Bristol Waste Interim Managing Director preparing to do business with your money

Recently departed Bristol Waste Managing Director Jason “Benny” Eldridge certainly had an interesting approach to doing business with our money.

One of his great ideas was to spend south of £100k buying some dodgy old milk floats off a mate. More public cash was then splashed renovating the ridiculous old rust buckets.

All but one has never been used and they are now mothballed at Days Road tip.

You couldn’t make this shit up.

BRISTOL WASTE BOSSES HAVE STOLEN OUR MONEY

Bristol Waste - get in touch
Get in touch! Ask ’em where our money’s gone!

Highly paid waste bosses bought luxury lifestyles with public money while cutting our services. 

Despite the best efforts of Bristol City Council to keep it under wraps, there’s a major corruption scandal brewing at Bristol Waste. 

Multiple sources have now approached The Bristolian telling us that some firms using the weighbridge (or Transfer Station as they now call it) at Avonmouth tip on Kings Weston Lane to dispose of their waste were not formally paying for the service. Instead considerable sums of dirty money have been changing hands behind the scenes between bent bosses.

The Avonmouth weighbridge is a straightforward system that’s easy to monitor with limited opportunities for systematic fraud without the collusion of senior bosses.

Trucks carrying commercial waste drive onto the weighbridge, present a Waste Carriers License, have their registration recorded and the vehicle weighed. The waste is then tipped and the truck returns to a weighbridge and is weighed again. A charge per kilo of waste is automatically calculated, charged to the firm and a waste transfer note issued.

Workers ripping this system off without bosses knowing would be tricky as there’s automated records of how much waste has been recorded as tipped and how much money is collected. The two figures are easily accessible to management and would need to tally. And they didn’t … For years.

Our sources tell us certain firms have been systematically not charged, obviously with the full knowledge and assistance of Bristol Waste bosses. Firms named to us include major corporate players in the waste industry. Who were they paying for their waste disposal?

We understand that a significant whistleblower stepped forward last summer and this resulted in the immediate exit of Bristol Waste MD Terry “I Am The” Lawless and his finance director sidekick Adam “Dumb” Henshaw.

We also understand that Bristol City Council has been undertaking one of its painfully slow arse-covering investigations ever since. When they intend to report, if ever, isn’t known. 

Meanwhile, our street cleaning is being reduced, flytipping not collected and public opening times at waste tips slashed to make up a financial shortfall partly created by thieving bosses on generous six-figure salaries. All conveniently helped out by our council’s slack oversight of a council taxpayer-owned business.

Further concerns have also been raised with The Bristolian over what materials may have been tipped at Avonmouth. If Bristol Waste bosses were breaking the law to fill their boots why would they be bothered about hazardous waste regulations?

Further tip-offs about Bristol Waste we’re currently investigating include stories of bosses signing off massive expense claims for themselves and the latest recently departed interim MD, Jason Eldridge, making generous and expensive use of Plan B Waste Management consultancy. Where a Mr Shaun Eldridge works – Jason’s brother!

Isn’t it about time Inspector Knacker got involved?

Got any info’ on Bristol Waste and its bent bosses? Contact the Bristolian bristoliannews@gmail.com. Discretion assured.

SEND WATCH: GRANT NEWS

Spy medium

At the scrutiny meeting where councillors discussed SEND spying, senior council boss, Vikki “Mata Hari” Jervis also tried to convince councillors that refusing to sign-off funding for the Bristol Parent Carer Forum, who council bosses hate for supporting parents and encouraging some to take legal action against the council was fine. 

Instead, explained Jervis, the money and work could be split among the 22 groups that make up a new so-called “Community of Groups” selected by the council to best represent the interests of SEND parents by never mentioning legal action.

Jervis’s claim is not true. Contact, who actually administer this grant Jervis is trying to award, say on their website, “Contact administers, and pays a grant of up to £17,500 available to ONE parent carer forum in each local authority area of England, funded by the Department for Education (DfE).”

Is anything council management say about SEND true?

SEND WATCH: IN THE EYE

Spy medium

Our old friends at Private Eye have picked up on the SEND spying scandal.

They picked up on the farcical ‘fact finding’ report produced by the council’s none-too-bright Deputy Head of Legal Nancy “Rollercoaster” Rollason which claims she found “no evidence” of  “systematic monitoring”.

A strange conclusion when emails in the public domain between SEND managers openly state that they’re “working hard to uncover concrete evidence”!

Perhaps they worked hard uncovering unsystematically?

SEND WATCH: DEMAND MANAGEMENT?

Spy medium

A random and incomplete selection of documents obtained under FoI shed light on what might be the point of the SEND spying affair.

Many of the documents released reveal that Education Director, Alison “Pervy” Hurley and her SEND managers were taking a lot of interest in FoI requests made by parents and in posts on social media between parents regarding legal action or judicial review.

For starters, council officers should not be interfering in the public’s use of FoI. This is laid out in FoI legislation as unlawful. Hurley and her spy team have therefore broken the law by obtaining evidence of FoI requests by parents and using them to discourage parents who were members of the Bristol Parent Carer Forum from making further requests.

On the question of legal action and judicial review, are People Director, Hugh “Cares” Evans and his Education Director Hurley running an informal demand management policy in SEND?

This is a money-saving policy used by public service managers to prevent take-up of services, often through obstruction. Council tactics may include slow and confusing processes, ignoring correspondence and communications, forcing people into long complaints processes and simply refusing people services they are entitled to.

The last thing Evans and Hurley need is parents taking legal action to obtain the services they are entitled to as this creates a double cost to the council. The cost of providing the service they’ve tried to avoid delivering and also the cost of any legal action.

Who agreed to pay our council bosses large sums to block people from asserting their legal rights to services?

MISSING IN ACTION

Goggin photo
Goggin: grinning Labour idiot that can’t be arsed

Another petulant outburst from our man-child Reverend mayor in the papers. He’s now got his knickers in a twist because opposition councillors aren’t attending his cabinet to watch him rubberstamp decisions he made earlier behind closed doors.

Seems councillors aren’t much interested in asking him questions at these meetings so that Rees can direct one of his bitchy little monologues at them that they’re not allowed to respond to.

It’s a shame the Reverend doesn’t take such a keen interest in Labour attendance at meetings. In three weeks in late September/early October there were four scrutiny meetings and one audit meeting and 18 places available to Labour.

They only filled five of them and, of those five, only two of them participated and spoke!

GOGG(NOT)IN

The current Labour record holder for not bothering to show up is the lazy bastards’ lazy bastard, Hartcliffe councillor Paul Goggin. He’s attended 33% of the meetings he’s been expected at. These are meetings like planning and licensing where he might have some input rather than a cabinet meeting where there’s no role for ordinary councillors.

But it’s not all bad news for Goggin. As it seems that this lucky council tenant has been gifted a brand new fence. Although no one quite knows how that works as it’s not council policy to provide tenants with new fencing.

 Is it some sort of special award for being fucking lazy?

ANYONE FOUND A LOST LIB DEM

Has anyone seen the Lib Dem councillor for Hotwells and Harbourside, Alex “The Disappeared” Hartley? Residents say he doesn’t bother responding to emails and he hasn’t been near a council meeting for months? Has he died?

The councillor has quite an inbox too as the Reverend’s proposed plan to turn Cumberland Basin into a corporate high-rise hell is high on the agenda as are various other smaller developments that may involve height.

If anyone finds him, please return him to Hotwells and Harbourside pronto.

LABOUR LAWRENCE HELL

Renhard-Red-Telephone-Box
Plasticine Man: career building in Liverpool

No article on councillor attendance would be complete without a mention of that legendary serial absentee, Labour’s Lawrence Hill councillor Hibaq “To Basics” Jama. Hardly ever at the Counts Louse, she’s reputed to spend a lot of time out of the country.

Ms Jama managed an attendance at council meetings of just 30 per cent for the first six months of this year and was nowhere to be seen afer the recent fire in her ward at council owned Twinnell House.

A fire that left one dead and eight hospitalised. Instead of visiting, Jama announced to residents that they could contact her by email if they needed to.

Was Jama out of the country? The Reverend definitely was. Hanging around at various obscure Bloomberg and Rockefeller meetings in the Big Apple, he finally managed to fit in a difficult visit to Twinnell residents five days after the fire.

Labour Cabinet housing boss, Tom “Plasticine Man” Renhard, meanwhile, was at the
Labour conference on the morning after the fire from where he did manage to tweet his sympathies to the victims. He then happily spent the rest of the day tweeting and retweeting about various dull career-building conference events he attended.

They’re all heart aren’t they?


KLU KLUX KULTURE BOSS HAS LEFT THE BUILDING

mussolini
Mussolini: would have been awarded a generous severance payment in 1943 from Bristol City Council HR

Is Bristol City Council developing a brand new severance policy especially for their racist bosses?

It looks like Genieve “Klu Klux” Adkins has been disappeared on long term leave for “personal reasons” following the Bristolian story earlier this week about her  racist outbursts. Isn’t being told to stay at home while you’re investigated generally called ‘a suspension’ when you’re not a senior city council boss?

This ‘leave’ gives the dodgy Bristol City Council HR team, now under the guidance of council timeserver, Steph “Who?” Griffin, some time to work out what the hell to do with the racist nutter they’ve employed and to organise a generous settlement payment to quietly ease her out the door.

Given the council’s loud commitment to equalities, will this open the floodgates for similar actions? Have tired and fed up senior bosses secured a new route to getting enhanced redundancy payments and large undisclosed settlements?

All you seem to have to do is work for the authority for a least 3 months. Organise a meeting with staff and members of the public, ensuring that you have some black and Asian attendees, and then spout some incoherent racist nonsense to the startled audience. Bingo!  The council will pay you to fuck off somewhere else with a settlement payment and an agreed reference saying how lovely you are with no mention that you’re a racist.

Gone are the days when gross misconduct could lead to dismissal. Instead you get a nice little holiday and a large wedge off the council taxpayer. Because, rest assured, this cost will come out of your council tax.  

Knackered council workers are telling us that the council cannot afford to pay for services like libraries, parks, housing, museums, transport or social care and these will have to go or be sold. 

But it’s not all bad and you, as a local resident can help. When the council put up your council tax to pay for this, there will not be any services left. So the ignorant council bosses you’re still paying for will not have a lot to actually manage any more.  Instead they can have a nice little rest and work on devising their lucrative route out of the council courtesy of Steph Griffin and her poodle Human Resources Committee of councillors.

Don’t forget, keep working excessive hours until you drop and keep on paying your taxes while not being able to afford to put on your heating or have a pot noodle for Sunday lunch.  We are all in this together (although some are a lot more together than others). 

Can we wish Geniveve all the best for the future and her new job? Perhaps in Italy? Writing up Mussolini’s memoirs? 

SEND SPYING: ‘NOT SYSTEMATIC’ MY ARSE

Hugh Evans
Creepy Hugh Evans, stalker of local mothers, trying to look hard.

Bristol City Council have been insisting via a ridiculous ‘fact-finding’ report authored by their ridiculous head of legal Nancy “Rollercoaster” Rollason that no ‘systematic monitoring’ of SEND parent’s social media ever took place.

Now a video clip, from the summer, briefly comes to light, before disappearing again into the internet shadows, starring one of the council’s ‘weak men’, People Director, Hugh “Cares” Evans. The “brains” behind the hapless surveillance operation, Evans says:

Would you want to read from your partner organisation or colleagues something on social media the like of which we’ve been reading on social media?

Leaving aside why Hugh’s being paid £180k a year to read the general public’s social media, are we to believe Hugh and his SEND manager mates must have been regularly accessing parents social media in a totally unsystematic way?

Or has he been lying through his teeth to a council lawyer?