There was traffic chaos in Headington this morning when Thames Water did not move off site by the time agreed with the County Council.
Permission had been given by the County Council’s street works supervisor for planned work to go ahead to install a new water supply to a flat above the shops in London Road (and install pipework for a second) so long as working time was between 7pm and 6am.
Thames Water arranged for a grab lorry to take away the spoil at 2am, but an emergency cropped up and the grab lorry was sent to another location instead.
The street works supervisor became aware of the problem when he started work at 5:45 and saw it on the cameras, and chased Thames Water. It was clear there were no Thames Water staff on site dealing with the problem, and it’s rumoured that traffic was backed up as far as the M40.
The County Council has made it clear to Thames Water that London Road must be clear by 6am (likely 4am) tomorrow morning otherwise a stop notice may be put on further work.
Apparently Thames Water is paid to put in new water supply connections by the developer.
Councillors will check this doesn’t re-occur tomorrow.
If anyone wishes to complain, we advise you to contact Thames Water Customer Services at customer.feedback@thameswater.co.uk
We are satisfied that the County Council had been given assurances that London Road would not be affected during the daytime. It appears that there was no second grab lorry available for Thames Water to clear the site.
Not ideal, but these things happen. Just surprised a company like Thames Water didn’t have a back up plan! What didn’t then help was the back-fill was done by 10am, and the four way lights weren’t switched back to the normal traffic lights til midday!
Agree – I know some strong words have been exchanged between TW and County. It should have been resolved sooner as it was first noticed at 05:45 R
As London Road is such an important route, particularly during rush hour periods, why was there no supervisor from the county council there to ensure compliance (at a cost to Thames Water)?
I don’t know if you live in the Headington / Green Road roundabout area but we are continually let down by the County Council and their desire to allow spurious Road works resulting in an ongoing nightmare of delays and upset.
It only took me 50 minutes to leave Barton this morning and that was only to get onto the Green Road roundabout..
The councillors and officers from OCC should hang their head in shame.
Better still, hang them all!
I enquired about that, apparently there is little that County officers can do in way of enforcement – normally they could impose financial penalties but it’s different for utilities companies who are paid directly by developers. The most the County can do is threaten to shut the works down if the situation is not resolved, which seems to have happened here, but all that would do is prolong works in a very busy area. The law seems to need tightening up here. Sadly, the top end of the London Road near the Green Road roundabout isn’t in Headington Ward although I’d like to see this happen. That way we’d have more influence over what happens when up there. We’ve spent a lot of time over the past couple of years trying to get different County and City and utilities companies talking to each other in an effort not to get the same patches of road dug up time and time again by different contractors.