I've uploaded this video because
I am sick to death of the shoddy work carried out by Leeds Highways
Department.
This is the full text of what I wrote to go with the video I uploaded to YouTube, but was too long for it all to be included. There is a lot more I would like to say and this is only the beginning as I am most unhappy with the poor standard of surveying and engineering execution carried out by Leeds Highways.
This video is of a corner at the
end of the street where I live, but it could probably be any number of places
in Leeds, or elsewhere in the UK.
This corner had been all broken
down and in need of work for several years, so after I had mentioned it to my local
Councillors and the people in Highways it was eventually done (probably no
connection) in late 2012.
I was very disappointed to see
that the level of the drain had been raised by two inches or more so that the
rainwater in the gutter would flow away from it, and on either side, huge
puddles developed. I drew this to the
attention of my local Councillors again, as well as the Highways people. I had apologies for the standard of work
from the Councillors (not their fault) but heard nothing from Highways. In the early summer of 2013 a new drain was
sunk in the gutter on the far side of the black and white posts you can see in
the video only a few feet from the existing drain, relieving that sink, but not
the side shown here. The level issue,
the primary cause, was not addressed.
Late in 2013 a third set of works
were carried out here when the entire area of the bus 'circus' ~ the wide area
with laybys for buses to turn round ~ up to the crossroad junction was
resurfaced, including the drain by the black and white post again.
For anyone who gives a fig about
standards of road building or accountability for public works, this is not an
acceptable way to carry out these kind of works.
The supervising engineers for
works such as this should properly survey the levels and plan for the camber to
drain towards gutters which then feed into drains. All this requires careful attention to the use of spirit levels
and surveying equipment. Not seriously
difficult, but something which just takes proper attention to the detail
required. Judging by this work done
here, no-one properly attended to the levels involved.
This is absolutely basic
stuff. You may say, Does it really
matter? Well this is money not being
well spent, and physical infrastructure being built to a lower standard of
function and durability than could be attained with exactly the tools and
equipment if the supervising engineer did what he should. In other words, the people who are doing
these jobs are cutting corners, not paying attention to details that the Romans
knew about when they built their roads two thousand years ago, and not
producing work up to the the industry standard.
And what is worse, the
supervisors and bigwigs of the Highways Department don't even check the work to
see if the standards are being adhered to.
A few yards further along from
where I videoed this, in the bus layby, a drain had its 60 year old drain cover
replaced with a modern one (which is far less aesthetically designed) and yet
the drain itself is still blocked and another long puddle stretches along where
the bus pulls up for the passengers to get on.
(They rebuilt the drain cover, but didn't clean it out, like putting new
wall paper over old without any preparation at all.) My neighbout actually mentioned this to me, so I am not a lonely
anorak complaining in the dark. I
rarely use that particular stop for boarding, only alighting, so I hadn't
noticed that the bus sprays the waiting passengers from the long puddle by the
kerb with the blocked drain when it pulls up.
These new drain, 'gully grates' I
believe they are called, do not appear to have hinges on them so far as I can
tell, so they cannot be lifted for drain cleaning like the old ones which did
have hinges. Whatever the case, this
drain is totally blocked and should have been dealt with when the road was
resurfaced.
This is work that was done in
about November of 2013, so it is extremely recent. And a few yards further along from that, at the pedestrian
crossing, the dropped curb has another one of these long puddles that settles
along it just like the others I have already drawn attention to because of
badly aligned levels, and so pedestrians are forced to walk through or step
over these puddles when there has been rain (and we've had a lot this winter).
These kind of poor standards are
endemic in the road works that Leeds Highways Department are responsible for,
and they are wasting our money while giving us poor quality service.
The latest thing I have noticed
is that perfectly sound cast iron drain covers which have a certain aestetic
and a patina of age which you simply couldn't buy, have started to be replaced
with modern steel gratings which are harsh and jagged in appearance compared to
the more attractive traditional designs which have lain in our streets for, in
some cases, over a century. The drain
covers which have been changed in this end section of Queenswood Drive had been
there for over 60 years and were in sound condition, just like all those along
our road, every thirty yards or so. It
is not just the traditional appearance which is important here, but the cost or
replacing perfectly sound street furniture with new stuff that must be costing
the city a great deal of money. If a
new steel drain cover cost £20, (I believe it could be more) and there are
about 120 drain grilles per mile, then the costs of replacement would be £2,400
per mile or more. This is a
guesstimate, but food for thought nonetheless.
Council officials have given me
absurd excuses as to why this is being done, such as ~ people steal the old
cast iron ones. I ask people all the
time if they have ever seen a missing cast iron drain cover, and never has
anyone answered positively to that, so I have to question this claim that many
go missing. I am in the process of
being about to enter an FOI request as to how many of these have been stolen in
the last five years and await the response.
And the idea of removing them all
so that they can't be stolen is, I have to say, perverse... I mean ~ how many
have been stolen, and how much did that cost, compared to the automatic removal
of probably thousands already and the cost of replacing them with these new
ones? I don't know the figures yet, but
it comes down to the cost of putting in new ones against retaining perfectly
sound ones and only paying for the (somewhat mythical I suspect) grates which
are claimed to go missing.
There is no need to replace these
cast iron grates. There are examples
around Headingley and Leeds which are over a hundred years old, and they are
barely distinguishable from those that are 60 years old. In other words, these things have a usable
life of well over a century and almost never go wrong or break, and yet
Highways have been stripping them out and replacing them for the last year and
a half or so with little or no public consultation, it just happens and then
it's a fait accompli.
At a time of unprecedented cutbacks
in public expenditure, this department is spending money on unnecessary
replacement of perfectly sound and aesthetic street furniture. This is just ludicrous and one has to ask
who is getting the contracts for the replacements?
Then they say that the old ones
are curved so they are dangerous. By no
means all are curved, a good proportion are actually flat, but those that are
curved were made that way so that water more easily flows into them, and they
have been an accepted standard design across the whole of Britain since at
least the late nineteenth century.
There are places in old Woodhouse and Headingley Hill where examples of
these which are from the 1880s are still in place and in one piece. To attempt to expunge this historic design
of street furniture from our cities and towns on the basis of some trumped up
health and safety excuse is absurd. How
much would it cost to replace the at least millions, probably tens of millions,
and possibly hundreds of millions of these cast iron grilles throughout
Yorkshire and the rest of the UK? It
reminds one of Pol Pot's attempt at creating a Year Zero, seeking to entirely
wipe out the past. When one pays it a
little attention it not only appears to be a completely bizarre and
inappropriate obsession with deleting and overwriting the past, but one has to
question where such a motivation comes from when there are so many other more
important things for the Council's various departments to be putting their
limited resources to.
At the very least the Highways
Department is out of touch with the reality of the present time and needs to be
reined in from profligate spending and made to concentrate on the engineering
standards of its works which are erratic at best.
At worst one is led to question
the motives for such policies which are both unnecessary and wasteful of the
public purse.
I have previously challenged
Highways on their removal of stone paving and now they are removing other
heritage street furniture unnecessarily, assuming perhaps that no-one will
notice, even in conservation areas where such things should not be permitted.
Well, people do notice. My father was a roads engineer in the West
Africa when I was a child, and he built better roads in the Nigerian bush fifty
years ago than most of these contractors do for Leeds in the 21st century.
It is a scandal that these public
servants fail to properly justify the trust that is given to them and wilfully
misuse that position to produce shoddy workmanship and unnecessary destruction
of our traditional heritage.
Complain about this waste of our
public resources to your local Councillor,
and the
Chief Executive of Leeds City
Council
tom.riordan@leeds.gov.uk
Leader of the Council
keith.wakefield@leeds.gov.uk
or Head of Highways
richard.lewis@leeds.gov.uk
