Success (finally) with Onyx House
Residents of Onyx House and Aberavon Road will be pleased, if possibly incredulous, to hear that I’ve successfully sorted out the ongoing cleaning problems in the grounds of Onyx House.
401 Mile End Road, also called Onyx House, was redeveloped by the Council as much-needed Temporary Accommodation in 2021. However, the responsibility for managing the block was unclear after the housing association Gateway did not want to take on management of the grounds outside the block.
I was first alerted to the problems in 2022 when residents complained that the rubbish bins were not being put away properly. It transpired that there was chronic fly-tipping of bulky waste and a poorly designed bin store meant that the bin men couldn’t put the bins away properly.
After quite a bit of back and forth, site visits with officers and irate emails escalating things up and down hierarchical chains, I managed to get the team to arrange a weekly caretaking service which seemed to work quite well, until the summer of 2024. The situation this summer became really awful, and neighbours were rightly shocked at the state of the outside area.
After making a fuss (again), the team cleaned it up quickly. I then had some meetings with the new interim Head of Service who promised me a plan for keeping the block sustainably clean in future. After four weeks, the grounds were filthy again and I still had no plan from the team. Time to go nuclear!
I called the Cabinet Member for Housing, who contacted the Corporate Director and issued instructions to urgently sort the situation out. The Corporate Director was shocked that the situation had been allowed to get this bad, immediately instructed a new caretaking service and agreed a timeline for the management of the block, and all Temporary Accommodation, to move to the newly in-sourced housing management team which manages Council-owned housing.
After a few weeks, the grounds have stayed clean, and repairs issues have been fixed. I am confident that residents will see a sustained improvement, but please do let me know if further issues arise.
See below for pictures of the situation in October 2024.
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