Friday 30 September 2011

Southern Gas takes a breaker to Deptford's new pavements

Remember all those weeks of inconvenience we suffered when the pavements just north of Douglas Way were being renovated? Well this morning it felt like a bit of a deja vu moment as I walked down the high street to find more bloody barriers blocking the pavements and some chap with a jack-hammer carelessly breaking up all the brand new paving stones outside the Vietnamese cafe.




I'll admit I was a little surprised to witness the level of destruction being let loose - why they couldn't just lever up the paving stones and set them aside for the reinstatement work I don't know. It seemed like an awful lot of noise and brute force for such a task.

Utilities companies are in fact required to reinstate anything they dig up to the same standard and quality of work as it was before, in a reasonable timescale. They are supposed to use materials of similar, or better, quality. I trust that Lewisham Council is going to inspect the reinstatement work, when it actually happens, and ensure that it meets these criteria.

So Southern Gas if you are reading this, that means you can't just dump some asphalt in the hole and run over it a few times with a roller. Although I'm sure you're not entertaining any such notions...

6 comments:

Anonymous said...

I hope they do put those paving stones back, I was a little annoyed when I had seen this the other day.

I thought Lewisham Council goes and plows money into the area and Southern Gas come to reverse it.

shipwright's palace said...

answers to questions about sustainability on one side of paper only please.............!!

thecyclist said...

Are those granite paving slabs? And were they concreted in place? One wonders if Southern Gas are in fact the one's to blame in this little story???

Peter said...

I've just walked past this to find it filled in with black tarmac, but the cordon is still there so will see if this is just temporary, and contact the council on Monday I think.

Anonymous said...

Ditto - pavement replaced by asphalt, somewhat roughly, couple of blokes doing it on Friday.
Saturday and they had piled all the barrier stuff in a rough heap and just left it cluttering up the road.
It is narrow enough in the High Street there with the 'site offices' taking up all the space where the phone box used to be. Filling the other side too is just taking the piss.
P.

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