16 October (Part 1) - Money to burn
The Lesnes Abbey park slide was
destroyed by fire on 9th June, allegedly by teenagers who were
interviewed by the police but never charged.
Since then Bexley council has sought to attract more teenagers to the park with
the installation of a parkour and agreed
to spend in excess of £100,000 on replacing the play facility.
It
was delivered to site this morning and one begins to see why a facility such as this costs so much money.
Among other things a secure shed must be provided for tools and the installation
crew are booked into a local hotel for a couple of weeks.
One of the men was involved in the original installation and sad to see the destruction but
probably not surprised. He said that when he was last at the Lesnes site there were incidents
of arson on work that was not even completed.
It looks likely that children’s fun will be restored by the end of the month as
promised by councillor Craske, but for how long I wouldn’t like to say.