Earlier this year, the City Council told me that pavement replacement works would commence in East Claremont Street in September/October this year. True to form, no such works have commenced.
Last year, the City Engineer wrote to me to say that pavement replacement works might commence this year but, there again, they might not. This attitude has all the hallmarks of the Council not planning works properly; a practice that was stamped out down south in the 1980s. I understand that the budget for pavement replacement works last year was not fully spent.
It seems that the City Engineer's Department has turned prevarication and procrastination in to an art form.
Freedom of Information Act requests show that the Council has no information about the date when the pavements were last replaced in East Claremont Street. Part of the street is paved in a concrete type of membrane that local authorities have not used since the 1970s. The pavings in East Claremont Street are in a parlous state: outside the Territorial Army Centre and on both sides of the street from the junction with West Annandale Street to Broughton School.
It seems that the dangerous condition of these pavements – craters, cracks, broken and sunken pavings – is wasted on the powers that be at the City Council and the Community Council.
Time for a change? I think so.
Shane Carter
(East Claremont Street)