I’m just wondering if anyone knows how much longer British Gas / Transco / whomever is responsible these days are going to leave the hole (or holes, as they have now become) blocking the pavement in St Margarets Road (opposite Taylor’d Lighting)?

I think it was about three weeks ago that the first one appeared, surrounded by “Pavement Closed” signs – unfortunately you can’t just arbitrarily close the pavement there, there is no other route to walk in to St Margarets from many houses in the area.

Just under a week after the hole appeared, on the Saturday, some men arrived and did a bit more work. Presumably they were not on a good enough overtime rate, for they only did about half a day’s work then disappeared.

The following Saturday some more work was done and a further, much bigger hole appeared. The pavement was still “closed”, those of us with children had by then push some of the signs floating around the area in to the road such that cars would be forced to give us some space.

Now after three weeks someone somewhere has seen some sense and placed barriers to force the cars to move across and mark out a proper pedestrian route around the holes — but there is no sign of any work taking place in or around the holes at all.

How much longer will they be there? Are we just expected to put up with this ignorant behaviour by our utility companies?

— Ed Randall