Making a mess of clearing the ditch

Here's a follow-up to an earlier article about the ditch clearance.

This is another resident who got the rather snitty letter from Kitewood. Whoever it was that cleared the ditch decided to pile all the rubbish against the resident's back garden fence. I think the email to Kitewood is very polite, all things considered. The photos are an eye-opener...

To: "info@kitewood.co.uk" <info@kitewood.co.uk>
Sent: Tuesday, 1 November 2011, 15:16
Subject: Letter dated 31st October to Castle Chase Residents, CT6.

Dear Sir/Madam,

Thank you for your letter dated 31st October 2011.

The notice in question has provoked the sort of response I was expecting.

Having recently bought my families property (last 2yrs), this is something which I have not come across before!

It was nice to receive a letter explaining the actions on the clearance of the ditch.

What would have been better PR on behalf of your company would have been a letter or notice – (which you have demonstrated by the form of this letter, that you can do this!) asking residents for help in clearing any debris from their land that may have spilled into the ditch.

As your surveyor will have noted that some occupants have extended right up to their boundary of their property, I have not - and as such did not expect to have the contents of the ditch directly behind my property and the contents from neighbours areas poured onto my property against my fence!

What happened next was what can only be described as a public relations nightmare for your company!

Your subcontractor not only cleared debris, but silt and other anomalies were 'placed' against fence panels, that quite frankly were not designed to have things stacked against them.

Perhaps in light of the Hillborough Extension your company will in the future think about improving public relations rather than distancing yourselves?

Regards,

AR

What's happening with this ditch?

You may be interested to hear that Kitewood carried out work to clear the ditch adjacent to the side of our house and right along the perimeter last week, this has never been done before since we have lived there and we wondered what was going on my guess is that they are hoping to improve the drainage of the field which has been prone to flooding in the middle for some years.

Last night we received a letter from Kitewood hand delivered to the residents of Puffin Road, Fulmar Way and Petrel Close stating that a notice has been placed on their land claiming that the ditch between our property and their land belongs to Redrow and they have stated it is owned by a company called Briscoe whom they act for.

They go on to say that the drainage from our residential road drains into the ditch and they can stop it at any time however they do not wish to cause a problem and that is the reason they had it cleared! I don't think so somehow - they would appear to be up to something my guess is trying to assist with the drainage to the field as previously mentioned.

Anyway I thought you might be interested to know about the development.

TH 2nd Nov 2011