Trying to meet their housing policy objectives has meant donning blinkers for the majority of those involved within the Council – and in any case in the main we are not only often talking about low calibre individuals whether elected or appointed who have been doing this but also those steeped in complacency and high hubris.
There`s been some controversy lately after Weymouth & Portland Borough Councillor Christine James made some remarks about the effects of social housing on a neighbourhood. The local paper, The Dorset Echo, quoted her as saying, “Having supposedly represented one of the most deprived wards in Weymouth for over ten years, the social housing is what causes most of the problems.” Some other councillors have taken exception to this, as have some readers of the Dorset Echo, with strong criticisms of Ms James and her remarks in the comments section. But these are typically those who have failed to read carefully what Ms James was quoted as saying. Further they neglect the facts that not only has she worked very long and hard in a deprived ward for which she has received much praise on behalf of the housing estate community, but has also been a joint winner of a national award for tackling anti-social behaviour. There are, gratifyingly, plenty of other readers who have taken the opposite view, praising Ms James for her honesty in saying what plenty of people know but won`t admit. So was Ms James actually insisting that all social housing tenants are responsible for serious anti-social behaviour that is a blight on the community? In the same way that blinkered cabinet dictator Margaret Thatcher`s Government and some match-day police squads trying hard to provoke self-fulfilling prophecies would have one believe all football supporters to be yobs? Well no. Ms James was making the wholly valid point that some people`s behaviour is so unrelentingly anti-social that they are almost impossible to accommodate without there being a severe negative impact on neighbours, and that these people typically end up in social housing (that includes the private rental sector). Likewise the reality is that only a tiny minority of football fans are violent hooligans. And likewise these miscreants need to be dealt with in a way that may involve segregating them from law-abiding football fans.
So no one, least of Cllr James or myself are claiming that all tenants of social housing are a rum lot. We are not even claiming that the majority are. Far from it. In a city in which I once lived It was only a relatively small minority from the council estate given the ignominious moniker “Little Beirut” that disturbed and often terrorised the majority of tenants. But this they did, representative of an awkward truth about the behaviour of anti-social types across the nation known as nightmare neighbours and who are most likely to be found living in social housing. Put a collection of these worst culprits in a house of multiple occupancy with poor standards of accommodation, a landlord who cares little for his tenants and the neighbours of his HMO just so long as he is raking it in each week courtesy of the benefits system, and may God have mercy on their neighbours` souls (please note: I`m an atheist just using a figure of speech!). Amazingly this situation can get even worse when one adds to all of this a local authority that hands out HMO licences (a requirement of the 2004 Housing act) like free entry tickets for a struggling nightclub, and then does its best to ignore the persistent and serious anti-social behaviour of tenants as well as a litany of other licence-condition breaches. Not only does such a policy permit anti-social behaviour and rogue landlords to flourish but it creates even greater despair for afflicted neighbours when they turn to the authority that should be helping them instead of rubbing their noses in it. Christine James has had much experience of such problems in her ward, but is aware, I know, that this sort of accommodation-linked anti-social behaviour has been afflicting many neighbourhoods, streets, and individuals in the borough for far too long. When I attended Melcombe Regis PACT (Partners and Communities Together) meetings while my wife and I were suffering, Christine James was invariably present. Indeed, the main item on each meeting`s agenda for 18 months prior to my first attendance had been the problem of anti-social behaviour stemming from such accommodation along with the abject lack of the Council`s willingness to do anything appropriate about it. Of the half a dozen or so meetings I attended Christine James was present as the concern about this problem continued with escalating gravity. She would have heard the desperate and sometimes harrowing experiences of many sufferers living outside her ward, and the sense of overwhelming futility and frustration felt due to the negligent Council and the landlords who didn`t give a damn. Indeed, the landlord of the HMO next door to us told me that he didn`t care how we or any of the neighbours of any of his HMOs were affected by the behaviour of his tenants just as long as he received the rent from them each week on time. This man, ostensibly respectable, is in truth a seriously unpleasant individual. Smooth and charming when it suits him, we know through experience that not only will he twist or lie about anything that also suits his purpose, but the evidence with which we are familiar also indicates that he doesn`t in truth care a jot about his tenants. His lies to the Council about me were so outrageous that many beggared belief. After we had finally obtained the subject access requests (SARS)that the Council had, until intervention from the Information Commissioner`s Office, been doing its best to withhold, we even discovered a claim by this landlord that it was I who was harassing his tenants and not the other way around! We also discovered, amongst many other intriguing nuggets of information, that following checks this landlord had been breaching many health and safety aspects of his licence conditions which we had strongly suspected anyway. Of course he should never have been granted his licence given the noted health and safety problems at the outset, and given the many complaints by us about his tenants` conduct and his management. The latter was further bolstered by complaints to the Council by other long-suffering neighbours of another HMO he owned. But you`ve guessed it. Weymouth and Portland Borough Council had not only decided to avoid logging such complaints but were hell-bent on licencing this man`s HMOs with impunity nonetheless. The only persons to be regarded by Weymouth and Portland Borough Council as a problem, and treated accordingly, were neither the rogue landlords nor their rogue tenants but the beleaguered neighbours who made complaints.
Just why, though, did the Council licence such establishments with glaringly appalling management? Why did they repeatedly over the long term do all they could to avoid taking action on anti-social behaviour and other significant and related problems? Clearly it is laudable to get homeless (or would-be homeless) people off the streets and into accommodation. Given that many of the tenants of such places cannot be housed by the Council due to a lack of their own accommodation or the fact that they have had to evict some of these people from Council housing, and given that the housing associations cannot necessarily oblige for similar reasons, then they were delighted for the private sector to step in. There are also other incentives which are financially beneficial for the Council, and then of course there are other vested interests. Freemason Ian Bruce is an ex Tory MP for Weymouth and now councillor for the Preston ward. He runs a letting agency and certainly was (I don`t know about now) the chairman of the Weymouth Landlord`s Association. In this capacity before becoming a councillor he was in regular communication with the Council about the private sector of social housing before he became an elected councillor. In the meanwhile his wife Hazel was and remains a councillor who has chaired many committees. Back in the days when we were next door to the HMO I was unexpectedly contacted by Mr Bruce, with whom I had never previously communicated, regarding our campaign to compel the Council to address the onslaught of problems we had been facing. Suffice to say the brief email exchange with Mr Bruce was not an edifying experience. The great self-publicist who is constantly quoted in the local press is someone who we wouldn`t trust as far as we could throw him. For more details on our exchanges please refer to the relevant blog: https://ianbrucecorrespondence.blogspot.co.uk/ . Interestingly, as far as I`m aware, Ian Bruce is the only person who formally objected to Jim Knight being knighted. Jim Knight defeated Ian Bruce in the 2001 election to take his South Dorset parliamentary seat (Oh! Dear! A case of sour grapes, Ian?) What needs to be made clear here is that Jim Knight, as our MP, greatly assisted both us as individuals and also PACT in our linked campaigns to force the Council to take its statutory duties more seriously and tackle out-of-control antisocial behaviour of licenced HMO tenants. The main thrust of this was to push for the landlords to be held to account for failing to deal appropriately with their seriously anti-social tenants, and we knew that the Council had a range of powers available to do so that it had been wilfully ignoring. As for any input by Ian Bruce in this matter, please see the relevant blog! Several people have expressed their opinion to us that Weymouth and Portland Borough Council was effectively run by what they described as a “landlord mafia”, and there may well be more than a grain of truth in that. Whatever, with some of these difficult tenants – known to the police, the courts and the prison service for their general anti-social behaviour, for their drug abuse and drug-dealing, and for other illegal activities – then quite honestly the last thing that the local authority should do is to licence the type of HMOs in which they are accommodated with such impunity. It should be patently obvious to the most overpaid incompetents and elected councillors of often greater hubris than intellect within the council that the impact on the neighbours of such establishments will probably be horrendous. An HMO or similar accommodation run by a rogue landlord with a high tenant ratio of anti-social types is a recipe for disaster on the immediate community. Since the latter have a poverty of self-respect and neither faction has any respect for others, it should be incumbent on the local authority to lay down the law that prevents anti-social behaviour from running amok. Both parties, landlords and tenants, must be held responsible. Christine James, however, is not one of those Councillors who has closed her eyes and blocked her ears. She is not alone in this respect. Councillor Joy Stanley has likewise listened and learnt, and done her best to help afflicted neighbours in her ward. But the almighty problem is that Christine James and Joy Stanley, while almost certainly not the only two (and I know of other good councillors who work hard putting their community way above self-interest), have been and evidently still are in a small minority. Here we should consider the issue of integrity. Christine James and Joy Stanley are prepared to investigate with open eyes and get their hands dirty where many colleagues would rather not venture. Further, in doing so they risk the wrath of fellow councillors and bosses and staff at the Council for flagging up inconvenient truths and campaigning to get something appropriate done.
Is it surprising that such domiciles can wreak devastation on the lives of neighbours who have worked hard to afford their properties, and who are characterised by their law-abiding and considerate approach to living? Having to contend with thudding music and salvos of shouting day and night, with vandalism and littering (including intravenous drug injecting paraphernalia) of their property, with the environment immediately beyond their property being turned into a filthy eyesore attracting only rats, and with actual or threats of aggression or violence? And that this just goes on day after day, night after night, week after week, and month after month with merciless intensity, making one ill and unable to function properly through chronic stress and sleep deprivation whilst the value of one`s hard-earned property plummets to the point whereby the only way one can escape from the onslaught of this anti-social behaviour is to sell it for a sixpence? Shame, shame, shame on you wretched councillors who do not want to acknowledge and confront this highly inconvenient reality. For I would bet my bottom dollar that if any of you head-in-the-sand councillors were in the circumstances of the tormented neighbours, you too would be taking an entirely different stance. Your hypothetical experience would be your epiphany. Your views would be forever radically different. Actually, as we discovered last year, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council`s Kate Hindson (now known as Kate Ryan) commented to the Local Government Ombudsman in response to our serious accusations that she felt we simply did not want to live next door to a house of multiple occupancy. Of course this facile remark was merely a feeble attempt to deflect from the Council`s profound shortcomings. And while we had repeatedly insisted to the Council that we had no serious objections to doing so just as long as anti-social behaviour was swiftly and appropriately dealt with, we do not believe that Kate Ryan or anyone else from the Council would wish to live next door to such an establishment as that with which we had to contend, and which, according to two policemen who were very familiar with the property and many of its tenants, housed “some of the worst head-cases in the borough”. Yes, you may well shake your head, Councillor Paul Kimber, when Christine James describes the reality. I suspect, though, that if in the aforementioned hypothetical situation you would be instead nodding it so vigorously your neck muscles would be at grave risk of collapsing.
Late last year I read in the Dorset Echo about rogue landlords being discussed by Weymouth and Portland Borough Councillors. The report focused on the unpalatable provision of poor accommodation with the flouting of health and safety issues by landlords with the notion of taking them to task. Cllr Ian Roebuck was quoted, but so too was Christine James who tellingly proposed that rogue tenants should be tackled along with rogue landlords. I couldn`t claim to know Councillor Roebuck well, but he did once have a brief conversation with me when I walked out of a community meeting after someone (not a victim of anti-social behaviour) had been extolling the supposed virtues of Steve Haggan from the Council`s environmental health team. I rose from my chair and briefly stated that I wasn`t prepared to listen to this. Councillor Roebuck rushed over to me as I was in the process of leaving and asked what the problem was. He seemed concerned and to want to mollify my displeasure. I tried to quietly and calmly inform him about Mr Haggan`s conduct with regards the serious anti-social behaviour to which my wife and I had been subjected for about a year. I tried to explain that he had done all he could to avoid taking action, that he had been contemptuous and unpleasant towards me, and that I had statements from other people who in similar circumstances had informed me that they too had been treated as the problem (for complaining) rather than the victims by this man. In the middle of this, which was after less than half a minute, Councillor Roebuck interjected, clearly not wanting to hear what I had to say. Over the next couple of years I twice encountered Councillor Roebuck in a local supermarket. On each occasion he approached me, said hello, was generally affable and respectful, and held brief conversations about matters totally unconnected to the anti-social behaviour and council-related problems from which we had been suffering. So having read the article in the newspaper I felt it appropriate to contact him. Not only had he seemed approachable but something told me he had little idea about the extent of HMO-related anti-social behaviour and its devastating effects on neighbours. Of course such behaviour could also be inflicted by those living in standard social housing bedsits, flats and houses. So I phoned Councillor Roebuck and offered him some of the documents I had prepared for the Local Government Ombudsman and also the County Court concerning our experiences along with some links to various blogs I had written on the subject. As far as I was concerned it wasn`t possible to have a debate on the issue without being well-informed. He not only declined but also stated over the ten minute conversation that he was utterly bemused why I should want to offer him this material. On the second occasion, having already given him a solid explanation why, it was a case of methinks the man doth protest too much. He assured me that he had a good idea of the impact of anti-social behaviour from the private rented social housing sector because a young relative of his had endured an unpleasant incident. Yes, Councillor Roebuck, I agree it must have been very nasty and frightening for her but in all honesty it was barely a scratch compared with the battering my wife and I took. So having repeated my rationale in a modified and more in-depth way, the third time the Councillor uttered his claimed complete bemusement served as confirmation that he was being less than honest. He also repeatedly tried to reassure me that the Council were now tackling such problems more effectively. This may be true – though I have no idea of knowing with any confidence – but in response I repeatedly told Councillor Roebuck that this wasn`t the point of my phone call as I thought I had already made clear enough. I did add that it was to be hoped that the Council had improved in dealing with such anti-social behaviour as well as being more respectful and sympathetic towards victims. Councillor Roebuck replied that although, he conceded, there had been lessons to learn, matters had consequently since improved. Despite his use of a euphemism and possible disingenuousness I wondered if he had been aware just how unacceptably deficient the Council had been previously in this respect. Hence I informed Councillor Roebuck that we had complained about the Council to the Local Government Ombudsman who had agreed that malpractice had occurred. I then added that we had eventually decided to challenge the Council in court but had accepted an out-of-court settlement paid by the Council`s insurers. Of these revelations he knew nothing whatsoever. It was also intriguing that during our conversation he mentioned the fact he had been a magistrate on four occasions. Well, so what? Why do some magistrates find the need to remind others of their honorary role on the bench irresistible? My mother, a woman who has always harboured some mighty odd and narrow core notions, was a magistrate for many years, and while I`ve known some genuinely good and competent folk who`ve been magistrates I`ve also been aware of plenty of odder bods who`ve sat on the bench than even my mother. Ironically, Councillor Roebuck has even appeared before magistrates in Yeovil on a dangerous driving charge. The good magistrates of South Somerset in November 2013 did not believe the erstwhile good magistrate of Weymouth`s version of events, found him guilty, and levied a combination of costs and a fine totalling £1258. And I will reiterate that I doubt his sincerity when he repeatedly insisted that he was baffled by why I was offering several forms of detailed journals and chronologies of events relating to our terrible experiences (supplemented by those of others) caused by some private landlord tenants. As for the serious problems caused by some rogue tenants inflicted on the immediate community, Councillor Roebuck was not in the least interested in being better informed. Resistant to inconvenient truths, such councillors prefer the maxim that ignorance is bliss? Really? Not for us and nor for other victims, Councillor Roebuck et al. Their obstruction of and imperviousness to certain realities evokes failing to convince creationists that their beliefs are total codswallop despite pointing them to what should be considered by any reasonable mind an all-engulfing avalanche of supporting evidence from a vast spectrum of scientific perspectives. I have had the psychotic (such was its extraordinary irrationality) experience of being tut-tutted with much headshaking because I would not accept the version of how we have come into existence as described in the Old Testament`s book of Genesis. In attempting to tell certain truths Christine James has been on the receiving end of such reactions from fellow councillors.
Though my objective in speaking to Councillor Roebuck was to try and fill a sizeable knowledge gap pertaining to the dreadful impact of some anti-social private or social housing tenants on their neighbours, it is a fact that the Council has failed miserably in the past to address these issues, actively doing its utmost to avoid doing so. This is hardly surprising since too many councillors adhere to selection bias in their knowledge-acquisition of the subject. It is also a fact, as we can attest, that there is little reason to have any confidence in this Council`s integrity – and we have a substantial amount of substantive evidence. We possess a mountain-high stack of it. After the notoriously lenient Local Government Ombudsman found Weymouth and Portland Borough Council guilty of malpractice the then Chief Executive), Tom Grainger, responded by refusing to accept this finding. We only found out about this a few years later after finally obtaining our subject access requests. Tom Grainger is someone for whom we do not have any respect. After a meeting involving him and Kate Ryan (then known as Kate Hindson) Tom Grainger said testily that we wouldn`t receive a single penny from the Council in compensation. This man demonstrated scant integrity and afforded us a similar dearth of due respect. But then we had been challenging and exposing the serious shortcomings of his little fiefdom along with its ad hoc dishonesty. We had even felt compelled to secretly audio-record two of their environmental health staff (Mr Haggan included) on a visit to us – and it was a belter! So no, the Chief executive didn`t appreciate us (Local Authority CEOs used to be known as Town Clerks, paid of fraction of today`s salaries in real, inflation-adjusted terms, and arguably did just as good a job if not better). We were exposing highly inconvenient truths along with considerable malpractice by the Council. We were fighting for our physical and mental sanity and for our livelihoods. We were campaigning hard to compel the Council to employ some of the powers afforded to them by the 2004 Housing Act. These had been written-in for just such problematic eventualities, to enable local authorities like Weymouth and Portland take effective action to minimise the anti-social behaviour. But for a long time we faced obdurate and unpleasant resistance, and such was the desire to shut us up and make us go away that one environmental health officer even suggested that the Council should consider an ASBO against me! This was one of the many gems we unearthed amongst our SARS, and little needs to be added except that not only was this council employee in regular contact with the obnoxious HMO landlord, but also neither my wife nor I have never in our lives of so far over five decades ever been convicted or even cautioned for anything, ever been the subject of any kind of court proceedings, and have not even incurred a single driving penalty. Well inevitably the Council threw as much mud at me especially as it could in an effort to discredit me – a typical tactic of the morally-bereft, guilty party. Yet not only has the Council since paid us the absurdly derisory compensation of several hundreds of pounds that the LGO negotiated with the unwilling Tom Grainger`s Council, but also we have received considerably more after accepting an out-of-court settlement following our belated initiation of court proceedings. We had prepared and collated a mass of approximately 100 pages of evidential documents (including many statements by other persons) and approximately another 40 pages of supporting notes for the court. Our only regret was that we didn`t go all the way with the litigation – not just for a modicum of more appropriate compensation (still peanuts given our losses and health suffering) but as much if not more so to hold Weymouth and Portland Borough Council and the implicated staff members and bosses fully accountable (we still have all these documents available for scrutiny by third parties). Granted, the bulk of the compensation was paid by the Council`s insurers, Zurich PLC, but the fact remains that, as we can attest, this Council has for many years not only failed in its duty with regards HMO-related anti-social behaviour problems but has also been aversive to facing up to certain realities. Just what is going on here? Has the Council been deliberately avoiding taking action against rogue landlords and tenants as a function of their policy to house everyone no matter how much of this excess was taken up by private landlords using HMOs notorious for anti-social behaviour? Alternatively could it be that the vast majority of councillors and council staff simply have had no idea about how awful rogue landlords and tenants can make life for neighbours? It is probably a combination of both, with too many councillors even without vested interests in the private rental sector unwilling to even explore the possibility that their policies might just have some serious negative repercussions. But the latter is but a symptom of the greater lack of honesty displayed by the Council in this whole wretched business. And as the former chairman of PACT, amongst other highly concerned parties lobbying the Council to get their house and those of multiple occupancy in order, have stated, the Council were absolutely desperate to keep the lid on this whole matter and stop the truth from emerging. It is also a fact that in response to our increasingly public exposure of our battles with this wretched Council it put on its website in 2009 a one-page feature outrageously entitled, “Not Guilty”. Under this heading the Council refuted all our complaints against it as being wholly unfounded. After the LGO had in early 2010 indeed agreed with us that there had been malpractice in our case, I contacted the Council and asked why following the LGO`s verdict this palpably nonsensical web page was still available for anyone to read. The “Not Guilty” page was swiftly removed, but has the Council since posted a page acknowledging that the LGO had after all found them guilty in respect of some of our claims? No. Of course not. But what would anyone expect knowing we know about them?
To avoid any misunderstandings it should be reiterated at this juncture with weighty emphasis that in no way is it the contention of this blog that all persons in social housing, whether council, housing association, or privately owned, are badly behaved nuisances. This is palpably not the case. It would be both preposterous as well as highly offensive to suggest so in the same way as it would be to suggest that all football fans are aggressive yobs – an accusation I have heard articulated. However I contend that it categorically is the case that there is unfortunately a significant number of individuals in such housing whose behaviour is severely damaging to neighbours and who are a bane of society in general. I am referring to the drug addicts (including alcoholics) who have lost so much respect for themselves they are unlikely to have any for neighbours and their immediate environment. All they usually care about is obtaining the next fix. There are also the highly damaged individuals who resort to aggression and violence at the least genuine or perceived slight, and those whose amorality and lack of empathy leads to a life of crime without any consideration for the victims. Some of the anti-social tenants can be a combination of all of these, and it should not be a surprise that when accommodated they tend for one reason or another to gravitate in clusters into the same HMOs. Plenty of them have become either homeless or seeking a bed in such establishments because they have just been released from prison with nowhere to go. Others have previously fallen foul of their social housing landlords such as the Council or a housing association or both in succession. Some anti-social tenants simply just don`t give a damn about their neighbours, and their selfish and inconsiderate behaviour is incompatible with communal living as I first discovered many years ago when living in a housing association flat for a few months: a nearby young female in the same mini-estate was completely unconcerned that she was keeping most of her close neighbours awake night after night by holding raucous drug and alcohol-fuelled parties that boomed thudding music around the neighbourhood from dusk until dawn. It was irrelevant to her that she was keeping awake people such as myself who had to go to work after sleepless nights, and all that bothered her were the constant requests that the music volume be turned down because they interfered with her notion of fun. Typically such requests resulted in the complainant receiving threats from groups of thuggish and intoxicated young men who frequented her flat. About six months after I moved to better and quieter accommodation I learnt that this young woman had finally after a protracted process been evicted. So to where do anti-social people like her decamp? As a consequence of their evictions the only viable option is courtesy of a private landlord.
Ideally everybody in society will be accommodated. It is a moral prerogative to seek to do so. In a utopian society everyone would be suitably accommodated, but utopia is an impossibility because people vary so much in opinions, preferences, and conduct. The ideal should nonetheless be pursued, but also realistically. I do not claim to have the answers but one thing is for certain: whilst it is incumbent on local authorities to do all they can to accommodate everybody, it is also incumbent on them to protect the neighbours and larger communities from the minority of tenants who can damage or even destroy them. As permitted within statutory powers, HMO licence conditions must be both robust and also enforced. Landlords have to know that they must do their utmost to keep their houses and tenants in order at the risk of effective penalties should they not. Tenants must all sign tenancy agreements making it crystal clear what sort of behaviour is not acceptable and will result in eviction. Tenants who breach their behavioural codes must be swiftly and efficaciously dealt with by landlords who must be dealt with likewise by the local authority should they not comply. Local authorities should also not only compel landlords to act accordingly, but also support them by intervening as and when they can by using not only tools such as sound-recording equipment but also a range of statutory powers available to directly tackle severely anti-social miscreants. Tenants of social housing have moral and statutory right to health and safety requirements. So also do neighbours of social housing properties, and this is not just a moral obligation but one that is actually stipulated in the 2004 Housing act. Not only would it be a useful exercise if the Weymouth and Portland Councillors were made graphically aware of the misery that such tenants can inflict on their law-abiding neighbours but also that they all took some time to carefully and reflectively read through the relevant sections of the 2004 Housing Act.
As a footnote it is worth highlighting that rather naïve but well-meaning social experiments have taken place over the years involving the worst behaved families from the worst council “sink” estates being re-located into pleasant properties in prettier locations. The (as it turned out) misguided belief was that if these people were moved into nice homes in respectable and more idyllic neighbourhoods they would integrate as their behaviour would become drastically modified for the better. Before long, so the delusion reckoned, these people would now take pride in themselves, their new homes and neighbourhoods. The outcome in the vast majority of cases, of course, was disastrous for their neighbours. Behaviour didn`t improve, and the lives of neighbours was terribly blighted. My ex- girlfriend was one such neighbour in a Lancashire village who had to endure seriously anti-social people from the nearby town`s most notorious council estate. I along with many others who then lived in that road can testify in some detail how the feral family re-housed two doors away from my ex-partner persisted over the long-term in being neighbours from hell. Don`t forget, Weymouth and Portland Borough Council, we are referring in these instances to some people who you have evicted from Council accommodation, or who you or a housing association will eventually evict after all the many months of warnings, last chances and legal procedures have been exhausted, and after often intimidated neighbours have finally plucked up the courage to take action. It`s time for Councillor Christine James to be heard and taken more seriously.
9thFebruary 2015
See also the following blogs:
https://wpbcexposed.blogspot.co.uk/
https://markvivbintotherabbithole.wordpress.com/
https://markvivbweymouthcouncildp.wordpress.com/
https://markvivbbloggingmiscellany.wordpress.com/
