Kingsway Villagers

Please has anyone got any spare paving slabs that they want to get rid of or sell?

The slabs we are looking for are the sandy coloured ones used all over Kingsway. They measure 60cm x 60cm.

We have looked in various garden centres but can’t find the same type to match our existing slabs.

We are hoping to extend our patio but don’t want mis-matched slabs.

Please if you can help post on here or please contact on
email: [email protected]

I read with interest and also confusion regarding anti social behaviour in Kingsway. It seems we all know about it, we all have suggestions on how to deal with it; sadly some of us have experienced it - myself included - but no one has actually dealt with it.

Anti-social behaviour is a very tricky subject and great care should be used when placing blame on people regardless of how they pay for their home. I do wish to make a point though as it seems HA residents tend to get a lot of the blame.

I am HA myself and can honestly say it was a private rented family that caused me distress in the first few months of me living here back in 2008, to the extent that I was going to move and at first thought moving from the village of Randwick to live here was a huge mistake. I am happy here now but this neighbourhood divide still bothers me.

Firstly I would like to point out that all Housing Association tenants are bound by a strict tenancy agreement and do run the risk of eviction if they are anti social. This is made even more of a threat with the proposed plans set out by Housing Minister Grant Shapps on the 11th of January this year… see link.
I do find that most HA residents are very well behaved and cause no problems to other residents because of this fact.

I know that an awful lot of homes in Kingsway are indeed private but not actually lived in by the owners and instead rented out privately. The agreements these tenants have to enter into differ greatly and with most of this being handled by lettings agencies and not the owner themselves, I wonder what stops these people from behaving in an anti social manner. This added with the fact that most of these properties are let on a six-month basis, what stops them from behaving badly in the knowledge that this is not their house and they might not be here long anyway?

I just wanted to point this out and tip the balance a bit in favour of all the decent HA residents. Private renters have no real reason to behave and the threat of eviction is not a real threat to them. They don’t own the house so they tend not to care about how it looks or how they behave. Some of the scruffiest homes in Kingsway are in fact private rented and not Housing Association.

Regardless of how the house is paid for taking pride in how your home looks and the way you conduct yourself is down to the individuals who live there. If you only have six months short term assured tenancy what exactly stops you from behaving in an anti social manner?

Finally private home owners must have been made aware that they would be sharing this little part of the world with people who prefer to rent rather than buy. I run my own business and could if I wanted buy my home. My confusion is merely why do HA tenants get the raw deal, who gives them the bad name and is it just private owners extending there ownership of their homes to the rest of Kingsway?

Kingsway is not a private village and it seems that most of the anti social parking is being committed by private homeowners who believe they have this right because they pay a mortgage. Well hey guess what we pay for our homes too you know, only the bank doesn’t own it, a Housing Association does.

I am writing this because I have been a regular reader of this site but never submitted anything myself.

I have had many conversations with other residents of Kingsway and it seems we all have something in common. I am talking about strange goings on in our homes. Could this be a ghost from the past before Kingsway was here? Maybe from it’s RAF days or even further back than that?

It seems we can all talk about these strange goings on but no one has mentioned anything on here or at least not to my knowledge. I am hoping someone will read this and put some information about the experiences they have or even someone with local knowledge who knows about this place before it was the Kingsway Village.

Examples of things experienced in our home are footsteps heard in the small hours, lights being turned on and off by themselves and the TV turning itself on.

Now I am a sceptic and still think there is a scientific or logical explanation for all of this, but some of the stories I have heard seem very far from normal and more like the paranormal! People will believe what they want and are entitled to do so, but in this day and age we should be more open-minded about such things and share our strange goings on with others.

Please if you have any strange tales I would like to hear about them. Maybe we can then make some sense of it all.

Editors Note: See related post: "Strange & Spooky"