I am having an issue with my local authority at the moment.. Bear with me and hear me out. The lights in our estate are not working, I am led to believe at some point they did. There is serious anti social behaviour going on as its a hangout for louts due to poor lighting. Developer has gone to ground. Council have his bond in place, council telling me really they aren't obliged to do anything. So per the above mentioned plannig act of 200 can someone advise on how to approach the council again, eg put words in my mouth.
Dear indebtedgal,
I don't think your first port of call should be the Council offices, certainly not as a lone householder. From the Council's point of view conditions on the ground have to change in your estate before work cancommences on getting the lights working again. There is safety and strength in numbers and responsible people in your estate must get together to effect change.
No Council is going to replace lights just to have some testosterone-ridden yuufs break them again as soon as they're in place. You need to form a residents association and put some time into working with the young people and Gardai to resolve this anti-social behaviour problem first, or in tendem with a Council presence on the ground in the estate repairing lights.
This is all about community action and community building, setting aside differences and finding common ground - not just "Lights". Young offenders must be targeted an taken out fo the equation by engagement, not simply shunted off for social workers to deal with. Early intervention is known to work.
Mind you, a couple of ASBOs for the ring leaders, making sure they replace all the lights they have broken might be an initial response but you need to put something else in place [FAS training, commnuity action, etc.] to arrive at a better way forward for the younger population as a whole.
Residents associations can be ad hoc associations of people but you would be better advised to set yourselves up as a formal body is you want people in authority - Councils or Government - to take notice of you.
And yes, before you get upset with me and deny the situation you're living in - it really
is your problem. If the estate is completed you have a case under law - see above and other posts - if you act as a body and garner a majority of the electorate in your estate to back you on this - but you must
act.
Councils aren't obliged to take in charge half-finished estates and if its incomplete - once again - you have to act to form a pressure group to force the Government to introduce legislation and set aside money to deal with unfinished estates.
Listening to Ryan Tubridy's show this morning it became apparent that there are may people in a similar situation to yours or worse and that in an ideal world engagement is the only short term solution, with whoever has the money or whoever has the responsibility beign brought to the table.
The problem is that no-one seems to have the money and everyone is ducking the responsibility. That's not good enough and it seems that some people are working up a head of steam to approach the government for a resolution to the current mess, including pursuing absent builders to pay for completions.
Therefore think local and set up your rsidents association first, then join with other assocaitions around the country to pressure the government to do somethign about this.
HTH
ONQ.