After some palaver, I finally i have an answer to a long running investigation into the fate of emails to contact islington.  I have written (by email) to Councillor George Allan three times since 21 October about the backlog.   He is the Executive Member for Customer Focus – ie he is paid a salary by the Council to work full time on focussing on customers (he is not a part time volunteer like the majority of Councillors).  I did not receive a substantive reply from him, nor from the Director of Customer Focus Richard Hill (a salaried council official) to whom the query was passed.   

So i telephoned and spoke to Yinka Adenyi, who by co-incidence used to be a very helpful and effective community support officer in Kings Cross.  She raised my correspondence as a complaint and Huseyin Senik a team manager at contact islington replied within 24 hours.  His reply is at the link below – it explains that there was a backlog, in part caused by a change in shift patterns
and an attempt to offer a more responsive service to emails.  The backlog has now been cleared.  I accept this at face value – it is always hard to do this sort of thing. 

But i wish the Council were a bit more open about this so that the large community of people who want to work with the council to improve the local environment (especially members of Eyes for Islington) know what is going on and can adjust their efforts accordingly.
Download mail_backlog_explanation_at_contact_islington.doc