26 October - The battle rages on
The notorious rat run
to the A2 known as County Gate has featured on BiB occasionally ever since 2011 when the Labour
activist now known as @Sidcup4RemainSafe (dressed in yellow) posed for my camera on the evening she
presented a petition to Bexley Council sponsored by former Labour Councillor Munir Malik.
This was of course long before she decided that my reporting on her activities was a matter for legal challenge.
On the evening in question (June 2011)
the petitioner was not allowed to speak but Councillor Craske who was Cabinet Member for Public Realm (now called
Neighbourhoods) gave his excuses. He said that he’d been pushing for a
resolution of the County Gate problem since 2006 and actually got as far as
hiring the contractors but was thwarted just 24 hours before work was due to commence by legal action
from an uncooperative Greenwich Council. They invoked the GLA Act.
Councillor Craske went on to say that a major impediment was
a Greenwich
Councillor who lived in the next road who didn’t want to see traffic displaced
in his direction. Having achieved very little the protesters
showed up again in September 2011 but the Conservatives offered up the same
old excuses. Inaction was Labour’s fault in both boroughs.
A year later history pretty much repeated itself with the petitioners back
in the Council Chamber and
in the News Shopper.
And again in 2013 when Councillor Craske’s blaming
of Greenwich ended up in the News Shopper again.
That was the meeting when it first became clear that Greenwich was taking
revenge action against Bexley by displacing its Eltham parking problem into
Falconwood (Bexley). Bexley threatened to use the GLA Act against them but the
coming of a Labour Mayor ensured that Labour Greenwich won that battle.
The County Gate rat run was kicked into the long grass until Longlands Councillor Lisa Moore
took up the cudgels in November 2021. Councillor Craske said he would write
to Sadiq Khan pointing out that the County Gate solution had cross party support
in Bexley. And then there was silence for almost three years but earlier this month
Bexley Council consulted on effectively blocking County Gate.
Greenwich Council doesn’t like it.
Forgive me if I find Matt and Roger’s response to be verging on the pathetic. “We continue to
urge both Councils to work together to come up with a solution that works for everyone.”
Yeah right! As if no one has been trying since 2006. Surely two Conservative
Councillors on Greenwich Council will know better than most how intransigent
and generally dreadful Greenwich Council is?
Index to County Gate references - some of them vey minor.