Putney High Street

There's been a lot of coverage and some discussion locally about last Friday's accident when a shop hoarding collapsed, injuring - in one case seriously - two passers by.

I send my condolences, and wishes for a speedy recovery to the two injured and welcome the Health & Safety inquiry launched by the Council.

Some have been questioning the common sense of a shop - any shop - choosing to have a hoarding made of concrete (or at least what was designed to look like concrete, and which was incredibly heavy anyway). I have sympathy with this view.

It was one of the reasons why my Save Putney High Street campaign launched in Autumn 2005 called for both far tighter design standards for the High Street and a shop front improvements scheme.

We proposed such ideas to try to smarten up our High Street - which any impartial observer must agree (still) looks cluttered and grubby almost two years on - but clearly to ensure some consistency in both safety standards and visual quality. This incident, while entirely unforeseen, suggests that the Council was at best unwise and at worst negligent in dismissing out of hand our ideas simply because local Labour supporters rather than Conservatives had proposed them.

Some progress in improving Putney High Street - but nowhere near enough - has been made since the last council elections: mainly thanks to London Mayor Ken Livingstone coming up with investment for aspects of the street scene that the Council is actually responsible for funding.

This isn't just about the Council. We need co-ordinated action from Transport for London, Network Rail and the train companies (to improve Putney Station), the Government's Departments for Transport and Enterprise (to deal with the impact of traffic on the area and to stimulate business growth locally), local businesses and, yes, the Council. What is clear is that the past two years since the Putney Society and my Labour team raised our concerns about the neglect of Putney High Street have been characterised by inaction and lack of imagination. What we need is local leadership. Putney simply isn't getting it from its Conservative MP and councillors.

Links on the hoarding incident:

• Wandsworth Guardian coverage


• putneysw15 website news story


• putneysw15 website discussion forum