A council is to remove road markings for a Low Traffic Neighbourhood that look like “giant Wotsits” following ridicule from residents. The Telegraph has the story.
The £300,000 upgrade to a 170-yard stretch of Grange Road West between Charing Cross junction and Clayton Street in Birkenhead, Merseyside, was completed last winter.
The paintings, which cover the pavement and the road, were introduced by Wirral council as part of a trial one-way system.
Paula Basnett, the leader of Wirral council, said that the furniture on Grange Road West would be removed by the end of August, with the markings removed by the end of September.
The council recently said that letters had been sent to businesses on the road “outlining the next phase of changes” and “new measures to help support local traders”.
The changes were part of a six-month trial by the council to see if a low-traffic neighbourhood system could create safer routes into Birkenhead town centre.
Brian Kearsley, a resident, described the system as “an absolute farce from start to finish”.
He added: “Wirral council staff concerned with this development should be disciplined and the consultants never used again. The waste of the cost should be reimbursed to the council taxpayers.”
Worth reading in full.
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The distance between Charing Cross and Birkenhead is further than 170 yards – more like miles 😉
This sort of obscene money – wasting by councils is sadly standard and widespread. Exeter City Council has been Labour – controlled for many years. Its Capital Financing Requirement puts its debt at £225 million. It lost £4.5 million on Exeter City Living, a council – owned housing project that never took off. It loaned money to the Science Park which apparently cannot be repaid. They financed a white elephant £44m Passivhaus leisure centre – how proud they were to trumpet their eco – conscious credentials – the pool of which is not competition size, despite them being told this at the planning stage by relevant swimming clubs, who have to travel to Plymouth in order to train. There is an £8m bus station with no accommodation for National Express buses. Meanwhile, most of the public loos have been closed, and street cleaners, who did an excellent job, have been sacked. They support things like Pride, and any other right – on cause, and celebrate Ukraine’s Independence Day.
I’ve passed this area many times. This is a classic example of how Wirral Council waste our Council Tax!
“new measures to help support local traders”
I wonder why they need “support”. Could it be that councils interfering with neighbourhoods might disrupt local traders? Problem, reaction, solution.
Will the penny ever drop that most “problems” that governments pretend to try to solve are either created by said government or are insoluble/not worth solving at the cost incurred?
Councils should then put all the rainbow zebra crossings back to how they should be and stop installing lights that change colour to celebrate different months e.g. pride month. Southampton council spent £20,000 (I hope I’ve remembered the correct figure and it wasn’t £200,000) installing new lights along the side of a bridge that change colour each month.
Some councillors are so stupid and eager to be woke/celebrate diversity I’m surprised none of them have installed lights that change colour, or painted zebra crossings, to celebrate black history month.
I believe those crossings are illegal. You’re only allowed certain coloured paints on the road.
The permitted markings for pedestrian crossings are set out the The Traffic Signs Regulations and General Directions.
This act of council vandalism, by council employees and councillors with the brains of a 3 year year old, has harmed many businesses in the area. Wirral Council is about £80 mill in the red due to their dabbling in the property market and wrecks like this with favoured suppliers, councillors who own and whose families own former council assets worth millions.
The scheme to renovated the town centre, budget £12 mill had a contract awarded before it was even written and this project was part of that waste of money. A £12 mill contract ended up at £25 mill (without anyone disclosing fully where the money went).IN the same area they signed a contract with the Canada Life Asset Mgt, for the construction of 2 office blocks one for council employees and one to rent out. By the time they we completed council workers would not go to work there as it didn’t have free parking and not one office had been rented.
This was on a 30 year lease which saw Wirral Council signing up for a £76.6 mill deal for the two blocks of which were down valued by the councils own auditors to £13.2 mill… Read more »
Same thing over the water in Sefton. The useless Labour clique (lead by the incompetent Marion Atkinson) predominantly based in Bootle, has played at house building, being a retail space landlord and setting up a catering company. They’ve lost us tens of millions. No surprise that none have them has any business acumen and no surprise that it’s not their money being gambled with.
Would be nice if local councils solved all the real local problems first before sorting out global climate and Palestine.
You mean do the job we actually pay them for? Radical stuff! 😉
It’s the Council that needs scrubbing off.
For public highways read council highways – we’ve been robbed.
They should sit back and do nothing, then it would disappear like normal road markings? At least, where I live, lots of those disappear each year or so! Then again, if they’ve got some cash in the pot at the end of the tax year, they might spend it that way; they can’t carry forward the departmental surplus.
“The waste of the cost should be reimbursed to the council taxpayers.”
From local taxation, ie council tax payers? Think, mate. Now, if there was a power to compel the consultants and the councillors to stump up from their personal accounts, that might achieve something.
How about, put it back like it was, and leave it alone. Far too many idealists who are happy to risk the waste of public money without personal consequences.