£120,000 TO IMPROVE HOMES

£120,000 is being spent on privately-owned homes by a Derby City Council scheme to provide brick walls along the front gardens of some properties in Dairyhouse Road. Others will have a hard-standing area provided at the front of their houses for parking. The scheme will also pay for dropped kerbs along the road and lockable security gates will be fitted on the entrances to shared passages.

The money is being spent because the area is classed as needing environmental improvement works. This means that unstable and unattractive-looking walls will be knocked down between houses number one and number 149 and either rebuilt to keep the front garden areas or removed to provide hard-standing areas to park cars off the road.

The opposite side of the road had a revamp by the council last year and the new work will be completed this year. Work has already started on building the walls and work on the hard-standing areas and dropped kerbs should begin in autumn. A planning application was submitted by the council as a formality, with the work included in the retrospective plans. John Mackenzie, improvement programme manager at Derby City Council, said that the aim of the scheme was to remove unsightly front walls, some of which are unstable.

He said, "The car hard-standings will be of benefit to the owners, pedestrians and also passing traffic by reducing the need for on-street parking on Dairyhouse Road. The owners have also been given the opportunity of retaining their front gardens and new boundary walls will be built instead." Residents along Dairyhouse Road have welcomed the scheme and believe that it will bring huge improvements to the area.

Presumably, all other home owners in Derby can expect similar financial help from the council when they feel the need for home improvements to be carried out.

Stephen Cocker has lived in Derby most of his life and has come to the conclusion that it is a big mistake to think we are all equal in the eyes of the city council departments which dish out the extra funding. Around the end of last summer the council was yet again working in the area, replacing pavements, dropped kerbs and grass verges, to make them all nice for the tenants to park their cars on. Council workers had marked three kerbstones for replacement outside Mr Cockers home which the contractor arrived to do.

When he asked if he was getting a dropped kerb, Mr Cocker was told, "See the foreman and he will sort you a price out". This offer was refused. Not only was Mr Cocker not entitled to the same things as his fellow taxpayers, but when the workers removed his three chipped kerbstones, they chipped all of the replacement stones, so he now has six chipped kerbstones. Let's hope our friends have better luck on the remodelling of their environmental improvement works. If only everybody was as equal as them.