No planning permission applied for as yet, I have reason to believe they were owned by the council so presumably are getting cleared to sell the land. Formally they are being cleared and restored to a "public landscaped area".
£106,000 (over 4 man-years of median UK household income) is a joke but no doubt it comes from funds that they cannot spend on any projects not of this nature. Should have given the job to Fish!
Last edited by diggingdeeper; 20th Jan 20186:43pm.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
It will be a dog toilet. Walk down the middle with the obligatory extending lead and poop without a scoop. The money could be from ERD fund, MDC, NWDA HCA, ect. or petty cash. The idea that money is ring fenced and can only be used for Councillors tea fund or wasted in any way is wrong.
It presumably covers materials for paths pavements etc, drainage as well as plants and planting, topsoil, hire of machinery, and wages for those working there. It is a big improvement on the crumbling row of buildings that were there before. Well worth it to have the place looking a bit better if you ask me, and certainly better to look at than another bloody block of flats.
It would be nicer if they made it into something functional, £106,000 for little more than a dog toilet is pathetic. Why not just flatten and grass over?
Better still would be the council not letting OUR assets get the into state those buildings got into. Far too often they waste money by not making things sustainable, I know that is partly Governments' (EU and UK) fault with the silly system of disproportionate amount of grants instead of budgets.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
Have a look at something similar across from the new still to open lidl or further along Borough Road towards the tunnel, or half a dozen other places.I agree with DD demolish and grass it over.The path leads from pavement to pavement for no obvious reason.It looks stupid and it is stupid. They should of paved the lot with the flagstones taken up from my road replaced with tarmac .We now have sidewalks.What did they do with the hundreds of paving flagstones.??
Its about time they outlawed the practice of suing for tripping over paving slabs, next all the pavements will be at road level in case people trip over the kerb .... ah wait, loads of new housing areas already have that
Natural ground is uneven, pavements are hardly worse.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
That's what happens when you use contractors. They're paying £106K for this because they are terrible at handling money - all of their debts are due to crappy deals and just scooping whatever out of the coffers. It took two men three days to put a new (quite big) driveway in at my folk's house, why can't this logic apply to this - if there is a single person having a rest looking at facebook on the digger, something is wrong. I like what they're doing, but this takes the piss.
- and a few other sites giving indications of the cost of landscaping, this isn't a bad price at all. I'm sure you can get a number of dodgy builders that would have done a far worse job for far less or gone bust with the cash, but I think its better to use a reliable contractor. I expect there were several tenders for the work and this was the least costly.
I'm no defender of the Council. They have a number of idiotic and monumental failures under their belts such as the £250,000 they wasted on their attempt to construct a cyclone centred on Birkenhead Docks, and falling for the great Chinese Trade Centre con, but this doesn't seem to be one of these.
But that website is domestic rates for small areas done quickly (turfed), commercial rates for a larger area and seeded instead of turfed should be a lot cheaper.
The other way of looking at it is paying someone a generous £50 an hour, and allowing for say £20,000 of materials. I reckon one person could do it in 2 months on 40 hour weeks. That comes in at less than £50,000
Last edited by diggingdeeper; 22nd Jan 20186:04pm.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
£20,000 is utterly inadequate. Topsoil is around £100 a cubic metre, so covering the 2,000 square metres with 20cm of the stuff alone would cost that on its own Then there is turf on top of that, and the machinery to spread it all as well as paths and plantings. It is likely, too that drainage will be needed. Nor does stuff like topsoil fall much in price with quantity, sadly.
Block paving for paths will cost you around £75 to £100 per square metre. A shingle path or asphalt about half that.
I have no idea who this superman is who can do the whole thing in around 2,000 hours (after the odd tea and lunch break) but it sure isn't me, and I doubt it's you either.
£50 an hour isn't particularly generous these days either. If you are employing someone you have to make an allowance for holidays, pay national insurance, insurance and a pension contribution, accept that there will be sick pay occasionally etc. £50 is about right I'd say, especially if you expect the poor bugger to do all this on his own in two months!
Yes, you COULD employ someone unofficially, and bung him a weekly brown envelope with no tax, but do you really want the council to work that way? It is likely that the result would be inferior too. Also, what is to stop the council official creaming off a percentage of the chaps wages...
It is very easy to sit at home, conclude that these prices are outrageous, and suggest how it could be done more cheaply, but these schemes rarely include much detail and gloss over any clear idea of what is actually involved.
A square metre an hour for all stages isn't hard work, I move over a tonne of soil/rubble 20 feet in an hour with ease, I'm hardly superman, if I was paid to do that I would consider £20 an hour generous, The £50 an hour was including hiring vibration plates, rotavators and the like on some occasions.
I'm sure there would be no shortage of occasional unskilled help at £15/hr (about twice minimum wage) on a contract basis to do some humping and dumping.
Its not a lawn or bowling green, its a dog toilet at best, no need for top soil or turf, robust grass seed will do, dig the earth out and bury the rubble.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
Well, the cost seems to well within reason to me and complies with estimates I've seen elsewhere. If you can do it a lot cheaper and make a profit, there is nothing to stop you submitting a tender to the council and winning the contract.
Be aware that the contract may well be a lot more detailed than you seem to think appropriate though, and may specify proper disposal of rubble, depth of topsoil, drainage, and details of the path construction etc. all of which may come as something of an unpleasant surprise.
https://democracy.wirral.gov.uk/doc...0GT%20Exec%20Summary%20ISUS%20Report.pdf This just about sums up the cost to us for the council to do anything.They employ a company to employ and oversee another company to give away £500 and advice. The advice is give us the ££ to print business cards and flyers for the new venture. It cost £200,220 X14 not including vat the overseer and council to give £500 X 14 of our money away. The same clowns are telling us they need more money. X14 is only the known, as they WBC cannot access the systems used to record the data.
Well, the cost seems to well within reason to me and complies with estimates I've seen elsewhere. If you can do it a lot cheaper and make a profit, there is nothing to stop you submitting a tender to the council and winning the contract.
Be aware that the contract may well be a lot more detailed than you seem to think appropriate though, and may specify proper disposal of rubble, depth of topsoil, drainage, and details of the path construction etc. all of which may come as something of an unpleasant surprise.
That's partly my point, the Council has probably way over-spec'd the dog toilet. Why didn't they put the job out to tender without specification and see what could be done with what money, there might have been a chance of something useful cropping up. It could even have been a project for a school, college, community team, youth club or similar. Maybe the community service people might have taken it on.
My complaint is £106,000 being spent on a glorified dog toilet, that sort of money could bring two semi-derelict houses back into use.
We don't do charity in Germany, we pay taxes. Charity is a failure of governments' responsibilities - Henning Wehn
