hernehilly

Another recommendation for Mickey who did a job for us this week. He is very reliable and prompt and very good at communication and explaining what the issues are. Easily one of the best tradesman I have dealt with in 15 years and wish I had found him earlier ...

Another recommendation for Billy - had nightmare scenario right before Christmas. Billy gave up his day off to take a look and ended up having to replace boiler which took all day and half the evening, just so we would not be stuck over Christmas without heating and hot water. He could not be nicer to deal with!

Thank you for responses.

Can anyone recommend someone to help general declutter and getting house ready for sale?

Does anyone know of a local home service - I am not very clued up and my iMac is running really slowly. thanks

Hi, looking for someone who could do an ensuite refurbishment fairly soon, as shower already constantly leaking and appears cannot be fixed without whole lot being replaced. Want to replace whole shower unit / shower head, replace pivot shower door with a sliding one, fix/replace underfloor heating and very likely lots of tiling work as floor walls are all tiled at the moment (some onto stud walls). Please pm me if you can help thanks very much

Hi can anyone recommend someone reliable to replace our back gate - is very old and am concerned re security risk so would like something much more sturdy/secure. thanks

I am a working mum of 2 - who are now 8 and 6. I've worked 4 days a week since number one and now do 4 days plus 5th from home during term time. I work in HR for a big professional services co, so have similar chats with many facing these issues. I always say, it's tough and don't make any long term decisions till you've been back at least 3 months; you feel guilty ,conflicted, tired etc but (and here I so agree with midivydales post), it is actually nice to be at work sometimes, having adult conversations, being listened to, not feeling like a drudge - the list goes on! I met a wise lady once at a work function, where for some reason I was apologetically describing myself as a working mum, and she said - 'you're setting a wonderful example to your daughters and you are obviously very good at your job, so there is nothing to apologise for or feel guilty about'! It suddenly made a huge difference to how I felt about things.

Or at least I think that is the problem, radiator was working fine till I turned it down the other week now can't get the heat back. The pin under the thermostatic valve doesn't seem to move. Any handyman/plumbers who can help? It's in my daughter's room and need to get fixed. Thanks

Can't recall exact number but I'm sure it was more than 20 to start with, and school had already started by time offer came so had obviously made alternative arrangements (as Renata says it may be a difficult decision to switch at that stage, I had to give it a lot of thought before doing so). But it was also the last year I think of the separate borough applications so some people were sitting on 2 offers from different boroughs - so that's different now. However subsequent to that year, friends were in the teens on the waiting list and got in before end of summer term. It's a difficult one to call. I empathise!

I'm going back a couple of years but we got in after a few months on waiting list. Can't remember what number we were but quite low. There has generally been a fair amount of movement during the summer and sometimes into the autumn term Also, in the past they've had less faith applicants than places, so 'spare' places became open ones. I don't know if that's the case this year but just to flag there might be more than 45 open places. Also you're assuming that the late offers will be accepted, they might not. You never know!

It's great, my two were very happy there and the mum's community was good too. Not perfect, but then again I doubt anywhere is.

Can i just agree with sew's post, as far as I am aware the private schools in the area are full too, we are on a waiting list for two of them and have been for several months. In fact we were verbally offered by one private school in Dec last year then got a letter in Feb saying that actually they were subsequently very over subscribed and we were now a long way down the waiting list. This had been our backup option if we didn't get into our nearest state school, which we didn't. Southwark could only offer us something 3 miles away. If Southwark are depending on private schools to make a difference, they will be making an error. We are having to go to a Lambeth school a mile away - despite my child having SEN issues and the Lambeth budget for treatment being about half that of Southwark.

Thanks batgirl that's very interesting, I should have pointed out that at this meeting I went to the Southwark Admissions person did get given quite a hard time as it was obvious to all that they could have predicted the problem. The Lambeth Councillor got given a hard time too for that matter. At the very least Southwark Admissions must have realised at the end of Jan when they had the applications that they had a problem, but yet they did nothing and then seemed surprised that parents were upset in May when the letters went out. It's unbelievable.

I recently went to a meeting where both Southwark and Lambeth were represented. Southwark Admissions rep said that they'd always had capacity in recent years so this year was a surprise to them. Their aim was to get children into a school within 2 miles of their home which they'd achieved (that obviously excludes people like us offered Southwark school 2.6 miles away, who turned it down and went to Lambeth instead even though we live in Southwark). They didn't talk about the long term. Lambeth, in contrast, had acknowledged some ago that there would be a problem and have a long term plan to increase places by 2012 I think. They have earmarked community schools for expansion (though not church schools because apparently they don't have to!) - their long term aim is for child to have a primary school within 500m. Unfortunately, they don't seem to have the funding to achieve this!