Another upgrade underway at Cutty Sark Gardens after prior failings
Greenwich’s Cutty Sark Gardens located beside the famous clipper ship is currently seeing yet another public realm upgrade project.
Much like the seeminlgly endless Woolwich upgrades covered yesterday, this area has seen project after project that never seem to go the distance.
And so yet more work is now underway.
The area also includes Greenwich foot tunnel with recent work undertaken on the southern tunnel building. The new lighting looks wonderful, though when plans went in for this project doucments let it be known that the last lighting upgrade – which was barely ten years old – saw every single lightbulb fail and never replaced.
Which sort of sums up every public realm project. Many projects have been and gone here in the past ten to twenty years.
Consideration of the mid-to-long term? AWOL. Who can forget the water feature that never lasted? Well, pretty much everyone as it barely lasted after millions intially spent.
Let’s see how this new change shapes up.
Council failings
Clearly Greenwich Council – who insist on being called ‘Royal’ despite letting much of the borough rot for decades – aren’t up to looking after an area that’s their flagship, let alone Woolwich or places like Plumstead and Abbey Wood, so what can be done to keep improvements looked after?
Well, as yesterday’s post about Woolwich highlighted, a Business Improvement District is probably what’s needed. Something Greenwich have never pursued though dozens exist across London.
Essentually it;s local business chipping in to improve a town, supplmenting funds from the often skint local authority.
The good news is it’s now being looked at in Greenwich twenty years after they commenced. And the council deserves credit for that.
I do however fear officers and internal politics may scupper it, despite senior officers clearly being incapable of looking after newly upgraded public realm after millions in often external money is spent upon across the borough for many years.
Hubris in Woolwich HQ helps nobody.
For it to work councillors and Cabinet members will need to push it through. We shall see if they do.
I hope this time Greenwich Council get it right and then go on to regularly maintain the public realm on a very regular basis.
Also sreet lighting in and around Greenwich Town Centre needs to be upgraded.
The stretch of the road as you go past the Ntional.Maritime Museum and King William.Walk/Naval College as you approach St Algeges Church, Greenwich High Road on the one way system where the street lights hang over the road on wires have not worked for years despite regularly reporting them as not working have not worked fot years. They are in urgent need of upgrading wirh new stteet ligjts installed hooefully before winter sets in. Greenwich Town Centre remains very busy in the evenings.
I do agree with you Graham. You are correct in what you say has is Steve. Greenwich do seem to be one of the more incompetent London Boroughs. They have a poor record of maintaining public realm and pavements.
I also agree with Graham on street lighting. You have to report streets lighting faults time and time again using the council website. Several lampost around. The Borough has not been working for months. Including several on Charlton Road. As street lighting is a service we pay for with our Councill tax payments. I wish Greenwich Council would take the reports seriously and get them repaired and working again with in a set time scale.
Greenwich Council needs to take people’s safety more seriously.
It’s been said so many times before that ongoing maintenance and improvements are essential to make major upgrades last and avoid frequent large-scale expenditure. The same goes for street cleaning- and I don’t just mean the litter picking which is all that’s currently done and even that is erratic not regular (and all I presume is currently budgeted for!). The new Pocket Parks/small green areas alongside streets have a similar issue: poor/zero maintenance. Even one staff person trained in horticulture could make such a difference.
But the other really useful method of improving environments can be seen in our Royal Parks, one of which is on our doorstep. It’s the use of volunteers, and effectively organised volunteers operating under a relatively small professional paid team- with different specialisms such as conservation and garden maintenance/planting/pruning/groundworks/tree-care.
There must be hundreds across RBG, thousands across London, who would be keen to help, who have a little spare time on their hands, and would like to enjoy the social aspects of this too, at the same time gaining life skills. I do this myself, and I can assure you it benefits others as much as your own mental health. Perhaps this is the ONLY solution. Knock-on benefits include healthy activity, helping volunteers improve their own physical well-being. So get off those sofas just sitting in front of TVs and enjoy the healthy outdoors. Ask RBG if you can help with street and garden maintenance near where you live. The more people who ask, the more likely RBG will wake up and see the possibilities. Now we have a few Greens on the council too; check with your local councillors as to what is possible, and get them to organise it!
Yeah but I didn’t vote for the grim party. The ones elected in SE10 only care abahrt their upper middle class voters. Iss abahrt people volunteerin n doin clean ups not the politics on ere. There’s loss of volunteerin goin on you juss ave to go online or library. Ere there’s a weekly litter pick in the area n all.
Do we know what they’re doing at Cutty Sark Gardens as part of this work? Are there any plans viewable online?
Greenwich has always struck me as one of the more incompetent boroughs, I have little faith they’ll turn that around. North Greenwich is a complete dumpster fire and the town centre is a tatty unloved traffic sewer. London is full of both new and historic areas with world class civic realms, but certainly not Greenwich.
Greenwich is one if not the most incompetent Boroughs in Greater London..
Which is badly managed leadr by an incompentent Labour administration.
Greenwich Borougjh needs real change of leadership with new fresh ideas on how to really impriove our great and historic Borough with more input from Greenwich resiidents born and bred in the Borough.
What Cutty Sark Gardens needs is a thorough daily clean – picking up litter of all kinds – cleaning the street furniture – removing graffiti , washing the pavements . That service should not be dependent on the establishment of a Business Improvement District – which could take up to 18 months and is reliant on a majority yes vote from those businesses included inside the geographical BID boundary.
Cleaning our World Heritage Site public realm to a high standard should be one of Greenwich Council’s core services – but it is not . Why would businesses be willing to pay an extra levy to the Council for basic services that should already be provided ? I hope those businesses now being wooed by Savills, ( the Council hired pro BID consultants ) to vote yes will be asking that question.