‘Repairs are not done’

• YOUR otherwise excellent report on the latest council attempt to “improve” Gospel Oak misses out the council’s failure to repair the basics of the Queen’s Crescent area, (Calls for u-turn over Queen’s Crescent traffic scheme, June 17).

We now hear (previously kept secret) that there is £2.1million in the coffers to rejuvenate the crescent. Back in February 2018 the sum was a mere £1.1million.

A smidgen of this alone could have been used to repair the basics, the photo (above) shows a patch of broken pavement near the sheltered housing building and a nearby drain is blocked.

These have been in this state for well over three years and all attempts to get repairs done have fallen on deaf ears.

Not so on money for plants and tacky planters though. Obviously these are more important than measures to prevent our senior citizens hurting themselves by tripping up.

Curiously it is unclear (at least to me) which cabinet member “oversees” these “improvements”, Danny Beales, Adam Harrison or Nadia Shah. Perhaps they can own up and receive tweets of congratulations.

Almost nothing is known of the legions of shadowy officers who, together with hordes of well-paid consultants, have been meeting in secret for some three-and-a-half years to produce this “improvement”.

Less than 20 yards away from a group of these planters people queue in the rain for free food.

MICK FARRANT, NW5