Ever tried alerting Wandsworth Council to hazards to the public?

Then you will have experienced, as I have, little but frustration and mounting anger as you are forced to endure an endless loop playing the Prince of Denmark’s March, while every few seconds a recorded message tells you that you are first in the queue.

After 20 or so minutes you finally get to speak to a human being about the slates and mortar that are falling of a roof in your neighbourhood.

You are told that the person who deals with such matters is about to go into a meeting and that you should leave him a voicemail message.

You do so and hear no more.

Two days later you repeat the exercise and this time the person at the other end, when you finally get through to him, puts you back on hold, switching at this stage to Mozart. A few seconds later the line goes dead.

How about emailing building control?

The address seems to be refusing most incoming messages.

Email your councillors? Sure, but while the message appears to get delivered, to date, in my experience, you will receive no acknowledgement.

In the case of a no-right-turn sign that was so dilapidated and with its light broken, that motorists, especially at night, were regularly turning right into oncoming traffic in Prince of Wales Drive, although I emailed and wrote to both council and councillors on a number of occasions nothing was done for two years.

We may have local council taxes as low as those of the Central African Republic, but unfortunately we have public services to match.

TERENCE McSWEENEY
Battersea