Arson Attacks in Central Norwich

Dear City Councillors, County Councillors, MP, Housing Officer, and anyone else who cares!

I am writing to you with my concerns over a number of incidents which have occurred in West Pottergate, Norwich. I live in a block of six council owned flats with my fiancée and our three year old daughter. We are on the first floor, the communal staircase our only exit.

Since I moved in six months ago there have been numerous incidents involving a resident in the block, Shirley Temple (name changed for legal reasons). We are all aware that she has some mental health difficulties and I have personally witnessed several suicide attempts and episodes involving self harm. This distresses me and has also had an effect on my daughter – it is impossible to hide the fortnightly police and ambulance visits from her, let alone the screaming, shouting and blood in communal areas. I am aware that Ms Temple has a social worker and assumed that she has made the council aware of the situation. In my opinion it has not been safe for Ms Temple to be living in this block and she needs more specialised care.

Recently my concerns have revolved less around the danger Ms Temple presents to herself and more around the dangers faced by my family. On 20^th May of this year there was a fire outside our front door whilst we were sleeping. The fire brigade were able to extinguish the fire and clear the smoke and we considered ourselves very lucky indeed not to have had to escape through a window. The fire officers were certain the fire was arson and our suspicions were that Ms Temple was responsible. After police questioning however, she was released without charge.

On Friday 27^th August my fiancée noticed another fire on the communal landing, and after the fire service made the building safe we were advised to contact the police. As it was late at night we arranged for officers to visit in the morning. I awoke to find that during the night there had been several more fires on each level of the building after the initial incident. On the ground floor a plastic table had been burnt seriously damaging nearby electrics, on the top floor a bike had been stuffed with newspaper and burnt to the ground and several bin bags had also been set alight. Police collected forensic evidence and arrested Ms Temple. She was later bailed for six weeks whilst evidence is examined, but the police were not confident that anything substantial would be uncovered.

On Monday 30^th August my family and I were watching a film when again we smelt burning. A bin bag had been placed in front of my neighbour’s door on our landing and set alight. The fire brigade and police arrived yet again and Ms Temple was arrested and kept in overnight. I am sure you will appreciate how concerned we were when she returned to the building on Tuesday afternoon. Reluctant to let her in, Ms Temple returned with a police escort in order to gain access to the building. All residents voiced their concerns and eventually a social worker arrived to take Ms Temple into respite care for the next week.

We have been told by police and council workers that despite their certainty that Shirley Temple is behind the arson attacks there is nothing they can do. There is a lack of hard evidence and until someone sees her actually set fire to something or she admits it then she is free to continue living in our building. Think about the time and money spent by the emergency services on attending to Ms Temple and the incidents she has caused; the time and money spent by the council on fielding our comments and complaints and cleaning and repairing our building; the stress, worry and ill health all residents in the block are suffering from; the heartache if the worst happens and we aren’t all able to escape the building should one of these fires take hold. None of this is necessary. Someone needs to take control of the situation and do something before the situation becomes even more out of control.

I hope you will take this matter as seriously as needed. I have sent copies of my concerns to several people.

Yours sincerely,

Alexandra Hunter

alex@technosprout.com

Big Green Shambles

Dear Big Green Coach,

Before arranging our travel to and from Global Gathering I checked out all the options available: car share, National Express coach, rail and finally Big Green Coach. At the time, Big Green Coach was going to cost a little more than going by train on an advance ticket, but we thought the ease of going straight to the festival combined with the atmosphere we expected on the coach would make it worthwhile. I am sure you can appreciate just how disappointed we were when our coach was cancelled just 9 days before the event.

At this point I looked again for alternative travel. The only option we could see was to book a train to the event which would cost over £140 each. There was no way we could have afforded that amount at such short notice, and we had to consider selling our festival tickets for a loss and cancelling the whole weekend. Eventually a family member in Lincolnshire suggested an alternative which, despite being fairly complicated, was just about affordable.

We got a train from Norwich to Nottingham at 5.50am on Friday morning, the only train to get us to Nottingham in time for the Big Green departure time of 11.45am. The plan was to have breakfast in Nottingham, catch the coach and head to the festival. This would have been a long and tiring day, but worth it by the time we got to the festival. On the Sunday we planned to get the coach back to Nottingham, where my relative was able to pick us up at our expected arrival time of around 1.30, stay at theirs for the night and travel back to Norwich on Monday morning.

Unfortunately when we got to the pick-up point in Nottingham none of the staff had heard of Big Green Coach. After several attempts at calling your customer service number we finally got through to someone who said the coach was expected to arrive at around 12.15 after being stuck in heavy traffic. By 12.30 when the coach had still not arrived we called again, and again, and again. The staff had no more information on the location of the coach or what time we could expect to be picked up. At 1.15 I called again and was told the coach was almost there, having been delayed again by needing to stop for a seriously ill passenger.

We eventually left Nottingham bus station at 1.45pm, 2 hours after our departure time. We asked other passengers about why the coach was late and told them what Big Green staff had told us. They were shocked as there had been no heavy traffic on the way, and no seriously (or mildly) ill passengers! I was shocked that your staff felt the need to lie to us at any point. The reasons for the coach being late included an hour waiting at Leeds, which no-one could explain, combined with multiple wrong-turns by the driver. From Nottingham to the festival there were several mishaps by the driver, including wrong turns, missing exits on roundabouts and leaving passengers behind at stops. Needless to say, with some passengers having been on the bus since 9.30am and us having been travelling since 5.30am there wasn’t much of a festival atmosphere. We got to the festival at 5.30pm, a full 3 hours after we were expected to, and enjoyed the festival whilst trying not to think about what Sunday’s return journey would hold for us.

On Sunday our coach was set to depart at 10.30am. It was a bit of a struggle getting all packed up and getting to the pick-up point, but we arrived 15 minutes early as directed on the tickets. On arrival we were told the coaches were all running late, and they had no idea when they would be leaving. Once again, we waited. Finally at 11.30 we boarded a coach, a little dubious about the driver’s lack of knowledge about the stops he was supposed to go to or how he was supposed to get there. Because we arrived so late at Nottingham we had to pay for a train to my family’s house that evening.

In short, we went from a £45 pp coach trip to a £60+ pp coach/train trip plus extra for food and drink whilst waiting around, childcare on Thursday and Monday to cover the extra travelling time and inconvenience for us and our families. We are sorely disappointed with the whole Big Green Coach experience, will never use the company again, and will warn others against the debacle where possible.

I hope for your sake you employ someone with organisational and customer service skills if you want your company to succeed in future.

Sincerely

Disgruntled Ali Sprout