9 March (Part 2) - In decline for 30 years, driven to the edge, now everyone wants to help
Bexley council sent out a Press Release today to announce what BiB readers knew a week ago. It is to lavish £75,000 on Wilton Road, Abbey Wood, topped up with another £75k. from the GLA. Greenwich council has done the same deal (the boundary is the middle of the road) making £300,000 in total. It was a Greenwich led joint bid for cash and preliminary planning will begin straight away.
When I told one of the traders
about the windfall last Wednesday he was
over-joyed at the news. Thanks to Bexley council reneging on on its
promise to look again at the parking problems caused by it acceding to Crossrail‘s every request, his income is well down.
The picture shows the disabled spaces empty (there are others) but the road as a whole busy.
The next day Teresa Pearce, MP, distributed a letter to all the traders, informing
them of the windfall and offering any assistance she is able to give.
Earlier in the week my arm had been twisted to draft a letter of complaint to
Bexley council about the withdrawal of so many parking spaces and their general
uselessness in the face of a crisis. I let Lesnes Abbey ward councillor Danny Hackett
have a copy and he has already written
in similar vein to Cabinet Member for Regeneration, Linda Bailey.
A little bit of thought and ingenuity could help parking very considerably but so far Bexley council has
been content to see the area continue its long decline. The cash should come in very useful
The pictures below were taken on Sunday morning but they could be from almost any time. Bexley
cleans its side of the road regularly, Greenwich relies on the wind.
Much the same attention is paid to parking enforcement. Bexley’s CEOs are in
Wilton Road several times a day and Greenwich’s almost never.
The ‘litter’ above is a pigeon!
