Don't flush those wet wipes!

From the BEO:

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Please consider what you flush
 

Unfortunately this week has seen another pipe blockage occur on the estate. As you can imagine these incidents are very unpleasant and stressful for both the residents affected and the staff who work to rectify the issue.

Please consider what you are flushing down your toilets, wipes are one of the biggest causes of blockages in pipes, and go on to cause flooding on the estate.

Wipes are often labelled as ‘flushable’, but regardless of any claims on packaging, wipes should never be flushed down the toilet as they are not compatible with our plumbing system. We kindly request that you, your guests, subtenants, or private cleaners refrain from flushing them down the toilet.

Our plumbing system, equipped with cast iron pipes, is particularly susceptible to snagging on anything other than toilet paper due to naturally occurring material imperfections which can easily lead to blockages and subsequent issues. The consequences of these blockages extend beyond inconvenience, causing significant distress to our lower floor neighbours and necessitating extensive and costly clean-up efforts by our contractors and staff.

To prevent the risk of future incidents, we urge all residents to ensure wipes are disposed of in bins rather than flushing them down the toilet. This simple action will greatly contribute to maintaining a pleasant living environment and drive down avoidable sewerage repair recharge costs for all residents. Thank you for your cooperation and understanding.

Reduced Cleaning Service - Friday 19 August

From the BEO:

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Dear Residents

We will be running a reduced cleaning service on Friday 19 August, rubbish will be collected as normal but may take a bit longer with less staff.

This is because the upcoming tube strike on Friday 19 August will affect the number of cleaning staff being able to get into the office.

Thank you for your understanding in this regard.

Bulky Waste - where to dump it

From the BEO:

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Managing the Bulky Waste Areas

Residents can take their bulky household items to any of the collection points around the Barbican Estate at the following Car Parks: Bunyan, Garchey lay-by in Beech Street, Cromwell, Thomas More, Andrewes and Willoughby.

Residents leaving items within the bulky point areas across the estate, are responsible for keeping the area tidy and must ensure the bin area and bins are accessible at all times.

If residents have any bulky rubbish or household items they wish to dispose of, they should contact the City of London Corporation's Cleansing Division. By giving five days' notice items will be removed from outside their flat on Tuesdays and Thursdays. There is a small charge for this service. Further information can be found here.

Residents can also dispose of items at Tower Hamlets waste centre. Please check the recycling page on the City website and the A - Z recycling page for further information.

Feral Pigeons on the Estate

The BEO offer to help with feral Pigeons

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Feral Pigeons on the Estate

We would like to remind you to please contact your House Officer or the Estate Office as soon as possible, should you find feral pigeons nesting on your balcony. Effective management controls will help keep numbers low which in turn keeps maintenance costs down.

To assist in the control of pigeons and seagulls, please do not feed the birds on the highwalks, lawns or in and around the lakes. In particular, please do not feed them on your balconies, as they tend to then roost nearby.

Keeping the balconies clear of twigs and leaves may also help to reduce the chance of any nesting. Contractors visit weekly to control pigeon nesting and use a Harris Hawk to control pigeon numbers.

Please click here for more details in the gardens tab of the Residents Information Pack.

Thank you for your help with this matter.

Noisy Emergency Works by sc64 (the Waitrose end door)

From the BEO

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Dear Residents

Barbican Centre drainage works at street level 

Whitecross Street staircase 64 Ben Jonson House

We have been advised by the Barbican Centre that they have had to arrange some urgent drainage clearance works (jetting) in the sprinkler plant room accessed from Whitecross Street. This room is located at street level at staircase 64 Ben Jonson House adjacent to the resident’s entrance into the block. The contractor will be using a generator and jetting tools both of which will create noise whilst the works are done.

It may be necessary for the contractors to close one end of the walkway (this is the walkway below the ramp, just past the Cote restaurant) whilst keeping one route open to the Ben Jonson s/c 64 street level door allowing residents to still come and go, they will  have signage to direct residents to the other way in/out if necessary.

The contractor will be on site on Friday 4 December morning carrying out the works to clear the drains, they hope that can have the drains completed and the works completed in one day.

If you have any further queries, please do contact me.

Yours Sincerely

Rebecca Bello
House Officer

City of London Barbican Estate Office, 3 Lauderdale Place, London. EC2Y 8EN

Switchboard 020 7029 3902

email barbican.estate@cityoflondon.gov.uk
www.cityoflondon.gov.uk
www.cityoflondon.gov.uk/beo

Window Cleaning: how it works

From the BEO

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Window Cleaning

The window cleaning for the flats is completed every 6 weeks, with the abseil clean carried out every three months. The window cleaners will clean the following areas:

• External glazing for flats for windows and doors
• Both faces of glazing for privacy screens
• Balcony screens and both faces of glazing in communal areas

The window cleaning schedule for 2020 is on the website, and on the notice boards. If you spot any shortcomings in standards regarding window cleaning, or you believe the contractors have missed your windows, please ensure you report this to your House Officer within 5 working days of your scheduled clean.

Please don’t wait until AGMs and House Group Meetings to raise issues. This will give the contractor the opportunity to return and rectify the issue.

Reporting issues promptly enables us to address deficiencies in line with our Service Level Agreement.

Please ensure that you leave your balcony glass and privacy screens accessible for the window cleaners. This will enable them to clean your windows without moving your personal property. If this is not done, we cannot guarantee that your windows will be cleaned.

Thank you for your cooperation.

Window Cleaning - from 21st Sept

From the BEO:

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Window Cleaning by Abseil

The window cleaning abseil on Ben Jonson House, John Trundle Court, Bunyan Court, Bryer Court, Frobisher and Breton House, has been delayed.

This will now start on 21 September. Thank you for your patience.

Rubbish! ... and what to do with it

From the BEO:

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Cleaning Regime across the Barbican EstateUpdated 22 May

We are continuing to provide more of our regular tasks.

• We will continue to complete your rubbish collection on Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
• Rubbish collections continue to take up more than 50% longer than normal.
• Please ensure any cardboard or packaging is collapsed/folded down as much as possible.
• There will be no weekend cleaning or weekend rubbish collection anywhere on the estate.
• If you are able, please take your boxes and packaging down to the bins to dispose of yourself, it would be appreciated. If you are not sure where these are, your local Car Park Concierge will direct you.
• Please ensure your rubbish bags are secured/tied up, as normal procedure.
• The City of London Fire Safety Advisor asks that you keep your rubbish within your property, until collection days – corridors are still a fire escape route.
• Our staff will continue to focus on the touch points within the blocks. These include the entryphone, door handles and lift buttons.
• Lifts are being cleaned.
• Spot cleaning is being carried out. Vacuuming is being carried out.
• Litter picking and sweeping has begun again on the podium area. Hand rails are also being focused on.

Please note. There will be a rubbish collection on Bank Holiday Monday.

Consideration for your Cleaners

From the BEO:

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Barbican Estate - Consideration for your Cleaners.

We have noticed a significant increase in rubbish to be collected and disposed of.

It would really help our cleaners, if you could ensure you are collapsing all cardboard boxes and packaging down as much as possible.

If you are able, please take your boxes and packaging down to the bins to dispose of yourself.

Thank you

Barbican Estate Office

Ayodele Ogunyamoju joins the BJH team

Ayodele Ogunyamoju has joined the Ben Jonson House cleaning team.  I understand he will be taking on the western part of the block.  Here is the BEO welcome letter:

Click to read the whole letter

Cote Survey - smells, noise, cleaning

The Cote restaurant at the junction of Beech St and Whitecross St, directly beneath Ben Jonson House, has been operating for several years.  Over this time they have provided a welcome service, and some very tasty food.  They have also been the source of frustration for some.

The house group is primarily a conduit for information.  A number of residents have raised issues about smells,  noise (e.g. throwing out glass in the evening) and cleaning (e.g. in the yard behind Cote).  The BEO have been trying to resolve these issues for residents by talking to Cote, but this has proved to be difficult partly because we don't have a complete understanding of who is experiencing what (including who has no problem at all).

You might ask why the survey is for that whole of Ben Jonson House, how could Cote could affect people at the western end of Ben Jonson House, but some of the smell complaints have come from flats overlooking Cripplegate Street.  Are these smells from Cote, or something else?  We'd like to know.

Hence the survey.  The aim is to get a map across the the whole building of what people experience, if anything.  With this information we can work with Cote (or other source of smells/noise/mess) to get the issues resolved.

So, please do give your views via the survey.

Here is the survey email message from the BEO (who are very keen to point out that this survey is indeed at the request of the house group!):
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Message sent on behalf of the Ben Jonson House Group

The House Group has requested a survey about Cote restaurant is sent to residents of Ben Jonson House. Please complete the survey by clicking on the link below.

Please complete the survey by Friday 4 January 2019. Many thanks.

Please click here for survey about Cote restaurant

Graffiti Vandalism s/c 62 L02

Since the arrival of the Banksys there has been some notable examples of graffiti vandalism around Ben Jonson House.   This morning a post to Fix My Street reported this on our door out from staircase 62 to Golden Lane:

Click to see the report on Fix My Street

This follows extensive graffiti vandalism which showed up at podium level beneath Ben Jonson and Breton houses (and was later loudly cleaned off):

Click to enlarge

It seems that the Banksy graffiti is being taken as an open invitation by graffiti vandals.  This is being discussed on Barbican Talk.

Graffiti magnet?

Banksy opened the door ...

 ... and someone "tagged" our door.

This graffiti on our door has been mostly cleaned off now.

Rubbish Reminder

From the BEO newsletter:
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Rubbish Collections & Requests

• Please store your rubbish in the rubbish lockers.
• Ensure your rubbish is sealed in the bags provided. If you run out of bags, please contact your Block Cleaner, Estate Concierge or your House Officer.
• Missed your collection time? Please take your rubbish to the collection points in the nearest Car Park.

Pipe cleaning in the morning

Some of you may have heard a very loud engine running from time to time during the morning.  Here is the source of the noise:

A mighty pipe cleaner van

A mighty pipe cleaner

The two gents operating the van for Baddow tell me that they are working for the offices at 45 Beech Street (Central Point?) which had not had a good drain cleaning for many a long year.  They estimate that their work will run over a number of weekend and will involve their mighty pipe cleaner plus some tanker lorries.

The office administrators asked Baddow to not do this work during the working week because it disturbs the people working in the offices.

I called the City environmental services people (0207 606 3030) and was told to call back if the noise ran past 14:00 or if there was any noise on Sunday.

Storage area beneath Shakespeare Tower?

Directly in front of the westernmost south facing part of Ben Jonson House there is a view of Shakespeare Tower, including an area at the base of the tower which seems to be use as a storage area for decorators working on the estate.  It looks like this:

A storage space?

A Ben Jonson House resident with a fine few of this area has asked the BEO if this area really is intended to be used as a storage area.  The answer was that decorators working on the estate had been told they could use the storage room (behind the blue door at the back in the photo), but that they should not use the area outside the room to store their stuff.

An update as of 2017-05-17:  Our house officer had a word with the contractors using the space and it is now all cleaned up:

Much better, thank you.

Window Cleaning Schedule 2017

I spotted the new window cleaning schedule on a notice board, so I have scanned it for the blog and put the dates on the calendar.

I have asked the BEO to send me a copy of this kind of thing so I can put it here on the blog right away, but to no avail.  I have also suggested they might set up their own blog for this kind of thing, again no.  Oh, well, here is the one from the notice board which has the spelling mistakes corrected by a helpful resident:

An annotated schedule

Waste in corridors: Avoid

The BEO have sent out a notice asking that residents avoid placing bags of rubbish in the corridors.  Please try to use your service cupboard for rubbish if you can.

Click to read the whole letter

A noise too early

This morning we had another cleaning team in action.  This work was nowhere near as noisy at the recent UBS pavement cleaning, but they started much earlier than they should have.

This crew started work at 07:55 and were done shortly after 08:15.  They claimed to have obtained permission to do the work from the City but said they had not been told that they should start after 09:00.

Not so noisy, but far too early.

Window Cleaners

William Parker is the new window cleaning firm engaged to keep our flat windows sparkling.