Building Control Awards not

Brown envelopes - Barnet Council? - oh yes"!

Awards day. From the Barnet council website

Boost for Barnet’s Building Control team

Published Thursday 14 June 2012

The partnership working of Barnet’s Building Control team has been recognised at a prestigious awards ceremony {held on 24 May 12 at the Old Library, the Guild Hall (sic)}

The Local Authority Building Control London Region Building Excellence Awards ceremony acknowledges the best examples of building design and construction. Awards are given for the quality of the construction, the innovation involved in the developments and the professionalism and skill involved in delivering entire projects across London.

Barnet Building Control nominated Alan Cox Associates Limited, in conjunction with Andrew and Dickens and Malone Associates, for their work in creating a smart new housing development in Uphill Road. The nomination won the ‘Best Small Housing Development’ category.

The award was part of a high profile and prestigious field of entrants which also included the Olympic Stadium and Velodrome in east London as well as the new London Aquatics Centre. The Olympic Stadium was the winning project in the Best Community Building category. The velodrome won the Best Sustainable category. The Aquatics Centre won the Best Technical section. Therefore none of these three mentioned projects were in competition with Alan Cox and any mention of them is just to sex up the dossier and make the award seem more worthy. A pretty desperate press release if ever there was one.

Alan Cox Associates is based in High Barnet and works with Barnet Building Control in a partnership arrangement and can make Building Regulation applications via Barnet for works anywhere in England and Wales.

Thursday 14 June must have been a very quiet day for news in Barnet. Well done Alan Cox for getting the award - you had Mr Mustard as a client a couple of years ago but someone will have to tell you who I am! ("the man with the mansard roof" might help you work it out - 4 applications for planning permission - no evidence of partnership working with the council during those 2 years -  just shock and awe that someone didn't want an ugly dormer)

When Mr Mustard first read this press release he was going to blog about people giving awards to themselves because the LABC awards are given out by an association of Local Authority building controllers so if they gave the award to Barnet Council Building Control it would be a self-congratulatory award worth nothing at all but it is even less than that.

In fact, having read the press release more carefully it looks like the Tooting Twister has been twisting for all he is worth (I agree Mrs Angry, not much, about a tenth of what his town hall tax dodging company is paid) and that all that Barnet Council have done is to nominate someone else for an award. This is deemed worthy of space on the website.

Mr Mustard is also a regular customer of building control and apart from one new-boy who was a bit rule bound all of the building controllers are sensible souls who work very hard and do a good job and take a pragmatic approach. One of them visited Mr Mustard to do the final inspection on the extensive rebuild of Mustard Mansions and spent the visit admiring the workmanship and wishing he had the same budget for his own property - he was drooling over the solid oak floors and it was a pleasure to have him in the house. He was sadly too busy to stop for a cup of tea and a longer chat about house renovation.

If a client getting an award is all it takes to boost Barnet Building Control then their lives are very boring indeed. Mr Mustard expects that they are embarrassed by the publicity for simply having done their jobs.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard