All you have to do is ask

When the weather is good, I'll sometimes take the kids over to the park that runs along the Hawthorne canal in Haberfield. Last time I was down that way, I noticed that the fence on the bridge over the canal was very rusty and had broken in places.

I wrote to Ashfield Council and pointed this out to them, and discovered today that they had fixed the broken fencing - and replaced some other sections of fence as well.

I keep on saying that organisations like our local councils do not have a "magic eyeball in the sky" that sees little problems like this. Councils rely on residents reporting problems to them - things like pot holes in roads, uneven foot paths, fallen trees, overgrown shrubs along tracks and so on. I don't expect these things to be fixed immediately, but they'll never, ever get fixed if councils don't know about them.