my council is currently sand blasting several street, including mine.
This comes after their attempt in 2005 to demolish the same streets saying they were unfit for human habitation, and were all vacent.
When the residents all turned up to tell the F off, the council quickly backed down (after spending over £1,000,000 on consultancy fees in drawing up the scheme. It was shown their survey report was flawed, cherry picked from a much wider area, and in the 400 houses due to be demolished only 4 were then vacent, with 3 of those being renovated, and the 4th – the occupent had recently died.
So now they wanted to sand blast the fronts, paint the window sills, RWP and soil pipes black, and replace the gutters.
I told them my house was sandblasted before we moved in and therefore didnt need it doing twice, i didnt want my window sills painted, my pipes where already black, and my gutter was perfectly fine, as was the rest of the street. and that really there was better the council could be doing than inconcequental work to private homes.
so in terms of waste – £1m on a daft scheme they couldnt afford to carry out, and the next a £1.2m scheme to carry out unneededasthetic works to private homes.
oh and the council have moved offices several times of the last few years depending on which local landlord is in current favour.