Kings Cross Environment

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

Most people find email the most useful thing about the online world.  I know how important Stephan Schulte’s local email list is for distributing information locally.  So if you put your email address in the box at the top of the page you will receive an email when theis website is updated containing any new articles (though not the pictures).  You will only be mailed on days when the site is updated – so don’t worry about spam.  Your email will be confidential and you can unsubscribe if you get bored.

The poll was running for about 3 weeks.  There were 37 votes (though not nec 37 voters) 54% though Contact Islington ‘was great,gets things sorted every time’ 24% thought it was ‘generally unreliable but better than nothing’, 18% though it mostly got thigns sorted out , with occasional mistakes’ 3% thought ‘it is awful would rather have the old system’.

So not quite a ringing endorsement but certainly not a dismissal either – i am in correspondence with Cllr George Allan the Executive Member for Customer Focus about the apparent email backlog, but he hasn’t got back to me – not sure whether it is an ironic pause, or they are having trouble sorting things out or are focussing on other customers………