Cllr Simon Bennett shows us slabs in Victoria St, Wolverhampton, where much money has been spent paving the area. A utility company has had to lift some of the paving but the quality of there work putting them back is not upto scratch. Simon calls for something to be done.
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00:00Welcome to the Simon Bennett. We're here in Victoria Street, Wolverhampton and a lot of money's been spent on the paving here in Victoria Street, hasn't it, over the years?
00:08Yeah, that's right. A couple of years ago, the completion of the pedestrianisation of Victoria Street, which the council put in place following grant funding from the last Conservative government.
00:17But the problem is, what we've seen, I mean, it's an outstanding level of workmanship that was put in place when this was completed.
00:24For all the delays that happened, obviously it's here now, and it's a great big open space. A lot of money was spent on the block paving, council's got block paving schemes for some reason.
00:32But in the last couple of weeks, we've had contractors down to replace some of the gas pipe, so not the council, who have left the state of the pavement, not as they found it.
00:41When millions of pounds had been spent on a project, it was part of a wider £19 million regen scheme for the west side of Wolverhampton.
00:49For it to be left in the state that we find it in today, where the grouting's failing already, they've chipped a lot on the block paving.
00:56The block paving, it's just, it's not how it should be left, and I think the council should be on the straddle back to Cadent Gas to come back and actually fix the issues they've created.
01:05Yeah, I mean, because, you know, over the coming years, there will be people that, again, want to lift the paving and do that.
01:12And if we don't keep on top of it, you know, come ten years, this is going to look a state, isn't it?
01:19It's going to be trip hazards, it's going to be, you know, bits of this stone chipped and that and so on.
01:24So, yeah, it is important, isn't it, really?
01:26Because it's not a faceless contract, you know, it might be a contract or paving that's been put down by a council, but it's on behalf of us, isn't it?
01:36The people.
01:37It's taxpayers' money that we've built that we've paid for this in the round, you know, our taxes go up to the central government and come back down in forms of grants.
01:44A lot of money, like I say, £90 million of various grant funding for various pots was put into this project as well as the projects in the west side of Wolverhampton.
01:53So, it's just really unfortunate we see this, but like I say, as long as the council are on it and they get the contractors to come back and actually complete the work properly,
02:00replace the chipped stones that they've put back in, you know, this will then last for, you know, another, you know, generation rather than what we see here now.
02:09You know, even when we arrived here, there's paving stones that are moving underfoot because they've not been put back properly.
02:15So, how does it work with the council?
02:17When Caden have said, can we come and dig up that new paving you've put down and we say, well, you've got to do it, so you can,
02:24does the council send someone out then to assess the work that they've done in terms of replacing a paving or, you know,
02:31because obviously you've chanced upon this, but is there somebody on the ball that, you know, if you weren't flagging this up,
02:37would there be a council kind of a quality control assessor or something?
02:41I mean, in terms of when, whenever there's the third party works, whether it's the water companies or gas or electric,
02:49the council can't physically stop them.
02:50You know, sometimes we see road works that we're not particularly happy with, but the council haven't got any responsibility over those.
02:57Suppliers have a legal right to be able to just, well, not just turn up, they have to have a licence,
03:01but the council can't stop them.
03:04There's no legitimate way to stop them necessarily.
03:07So, go on.
03:07And in terms of quality control, from a council point of view, whenever they do their major projects,
03:12they would have had their own quality control and build control to come down.
03:16So, when this is completed, I'm sure, if it's completed, they would have had the council representative come down.
03:22But because it's a third party come down to do the work, so on this section here, as you can see,
03:27I wouldn't think there's going to be a council employee come down, and I wouldn't have expected that necessarily,
03:32but maybe in future it needs to be looked at so we don't have this issue again.
03:35So, we can see where they've, it looks like they've chipped the stone here,
03:40and they've tried to fill it in with some kind of a fill, which is fairly hard.
03:46But then, where we come to where the stone's been chipped here, I mean, it's just, it's just coming straight out, you know.