At the last Seafield Stakeholders’ meeting we complained yet again about the fact that our small voluntary Community Council has been doing all the work of effectively gathering complaints about Seafield smells, while big powerful and well-funded organisations like SEPA, Veolia and Scottish Water just sit back.
This imbalance of power:effort led our MSP to charge Scottish Water with the duty to meet with us to explore ways of working together to create a more effective complaints system for all.
However, when we met, we found that Scottish Water had already used our template to create a new reporting system which is in their control exclusively. We in the community are to have no access to complaints (which they call ‘observations!) This, we were told, was because of privacy issues.
We felt that this action was a betrayal of trust and goodwill, and that we were left with the difficult choice of either dropping our own complaints system in favour of one we will have no access to, or keeping ours and having two systems running at once, causing confusion for local residents.
The Community Council felt overwhelmingly that it was vital that we keep our independent complaints system, so that we and others have evidence and data around which to campaign. You will see it is still there on our website, to use.
Although winter does not tend to be a ‘smelly season’, that can start as early as February, and we ask you to please continue to use our complaints facility whenever you notice a Seafield stench, whether it be of sewage, burning rubber or other chemical smells. Don’t hesitate, it only takes a few minutes!
