10 April - Back to front planning
Hindsight is as we know a wonderful thing and it is easy to look back and say
that the Wilton Road regeneration should have started with replacing the street
lamps, then pave around them and finally install shop doors that line up with the new paving.
The work was actually done in the reverse of that sequence which is giving
rise to a variety of problems some of which will never be fixed.
It was almost inevitable. Mayor Boris Johnson funded
the shop refurbishment and
said the money had to be spent by this time last year - an extension was given
and the work was mostly completed by October 2016.
Greenwich Council came up with the money for improving the public realm and some
of the men working on it are reported to have said that the lighting contractor let
everyone down, possibly they went bust. So today we saw paving being ripped up
that had been laid only last week because now that the Wilton Road paving is
more or less done the street lamps on the Bexley side of the road are being belatedly changed.
The main reason
for returning to the subject of Wilton Road so soon is because
yesterday’s report was picked up on Twitter by
fromthemurkydepths
and my later research proved that part of my blog must be inaccurate.
It said that a drain pipe had been covered last week but a review of old photos
showed it in situ last October and its owner confirmed today
that it has not been subsequently removed - at least not during shop hours.
However the fact remains that the shutter has been damaged and it is reported
that a securing bolt has been severed. None of the photographs provide sufficient detail to confirm it.
But there is no doubt the shutter no longer meets the ground.
With shop doors so close together and no one thinking
in advance that the height of adjacent doorways should be the same, providing step free access can only mean a
noticeable slope. As a result new shutters have been rendered vulnerable to crowbars and levers. Icy conditions could
prove to be a hazard too.
If only the work had progressed in a more logical sequence.