After person or persons unknown reversed a vehicle into a lamp post in Histon the council to its credit put a new one in along side the old, damaged one. This was done some time ago and at the beginning of this week (29 Sep 08) its contractor came along and dug a hole to switch the power from the old lamp post to the new one. All pretty good so far.

Later in the week (2 Oct 08)  another contractor turned up and filled in the hole left by the previous one. When asked by a concerned resident the worker doing the job explained that a 3rd contractor should have been along earlier to remove the old lamp post but that it been unable to do so. He further explained that someone would be back later to dig another hole, contractor number 3 could then remove the old lamp post and then contractor number 2 would return to refill the hole.

The worker went on to tell the resident that this was nothing unusual and that the problem was that there were too many contractors and no-one exercising control over them.

County Councillor David Jenkins said: ‘ this is really rather sad but I’m afraid that it’s a consequence of the council outsourcing the work but being unable to manage the outsourcing contract. It’s dealing with some pretty savvy partners who have such deals with many councils and they know how to make money from them. And they themselves employ sub-contractors which means that the council has little control over either the quality, the cost or the timeliness of the work done’.