Although this decision arrives somewhat late in the day, as the first illegally over-priced permits and vouchers were sold in April 2011, Mr Mustard does welcome it as the council are doing the right thing for which they should, finally, be gently applauded.
Mr Mustard does have some sympathy with the council who must have thought that after all the free bad publicity about the permit price hike and the judicial review in national newspapers like the Guardian, that residents would be stampeding up to the Town Hall with their refund applications. That turned out not to be the case.
What the council probably overlooked was their own statistic about resident churn in the borough in that 8% of residents change each year so those who have moved away (or sadly died) wouldn't have known that a refund is due.
So far only about 5,200 out of the estimated 12,000 who are eligible for a refund have received a collective £1.2m with another £1.3m still to be distributed.
Mr Mustard's only concern with this 9 page report (he has shown you just the main 2 pages) is that as far as Mr Mustard can tell Civica are only going to contact residents at the address on file. There is no indication that any tracing action will be taken if the resident does not respond in order to verify if the resident is still resident or if they have moved away and to obtain the new address.
Mr Mustard thinks that another report to effect tracing will be required later on.
Yours frugally
Mr Mustard
I think it was the actor Jimmy Durant who said, in his inimitable New York accent "Dere ain't no such 'ting as bad publicity"
ReplyDeleteBut they have NOT reduced business permits back to the old price nor offered to refund us. A 'great place to do business'? Think not!
ReplyDelete