Another Daft government Policy

I Had a destitute Romanian across my path today..

How crazy that they and Bulgarians can be here legally as EU nationals yet with no right to seek employment nor to claim on public funds.

see an outline of the situation on http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/world/europe/5381990.stm

He'd even been thrown out of a homeless night shelter because they could not claim housing benefit on his behalf!!

Running Wild in Broadgate

Back in the early spring a local open space back of South Beech Street was tidied up by Groundwork as part of their Small sites in west preston scheme. It looked really good, overgrown shrubs cleared out, litter remove, ground cover plants planted and all topped with a layer of woodchip mulch. Ir was an Avencentral SRB6 project so their logo got stuck up on some nice signs, designed by local school kids.

But look at it today 3 months on...

Why has it deteriorated so quickly...

There has been some deliberate damage with some plants ripped up.. probabbly by bored and possibly drunken people.. And maybe the choice of plants and quality of weed root removal was not good when the work was done

But the real problem is lack of maintenance... Why?

Because it was a short term project... Groundwork's funding came to an end on March 31st. and their staff are no longer around.. In an ideal world they would have left behind a community group to look after the place... But why should anyone want to work hard gardening a public space when we pay the Council to do that and we are all busy anyway? And the community development was just not done in the original project.

Formally the city council has the responsibility for maintaining the area.. But they are always and increasingly hard pressed for staff and funds.. If its not a high prestige area then they are going to neglect it.

So its yet another example of a short term scheme based on funny regeneration money ending up being a waste of effort, because there was no continuation funding...