Central London has a ‘significant problem’ with street clutter, it’s claimed. Few London boroughs have processes in place to declutter their streets routinely, according to a report by the Centre for London, a think-tank and a registered charity. Mark Rowe looks at the report from a private security angle.
The report suggests street furniture including bollards have been over-provided on London streets. Bollards are ‘often overused as an ‘easy’ or cheap design solution for preventing vehicles from encroaching on pedestrian areas’, it’s claimed. The researchers give Belvedere Road as an example of over-provision of bollards, which were having a negative impact on the street. Researchers counted some 50 bollards on a 400m stretch of the road (between Waterloo station and the Thames) and argued that 14 should be removed.
Clutter matters and decluttering is a good thing, in civic spaces, not only in your wardrobe and living room, and for numerous CPTED (crime prevention through environmental design) and non-crime reasons (the infirm and the partially sighted may trip). Telephone kiosks long outdated thanks to the mobile phone and only retained for the advertising revenue not only may attract nuisances such as stickers offering sex services; bags left in kiosks may prompt genuine or malicious calls of a suspect package that may require a building evacuation in the vicinity, or at least a building or security manager’s decision that it’s probably a hoax. As for which streets of the capital are cluttered, in a foreword to the document, Alexander Jan, Non-executive Chair, of one of London’s business improvement districts (BIDs), the Central District Alliance left out the City of London, Canary Wharf and the ‘Great Estates’ (parts of central London such as Russell Square, Mayfair and St James, laid out by aristocrat owners hundreds of years ago). Otherwise, he wrote, roads and pavements are ‘frequently scarred with an array of abandoned phone boxes, unending piles of commercial refuse, poor utility reinstatements and relentless roadworks’.
He went on: “Then there are strewn hire bikes and e-scooters, vast arrays of left-behind traffic signs, “rocking” manhole covers, fly-tipping and overflowing bins. These are not everywhere but they are sufficiently widespread in the centre of London to make walking, pushing a pram or using a wheelchair an unpleasant experience.” As he put it, it makes going about the street for residents, commuters and visitors ‘so very wearing’, and we can add to that drivers of cash in transit vehicles who want as clear and quick a walk from shop or bank to their van; and security officers who are standing at the entrance of the place they’re guarding, whether a national museum or a convenience store. Alexander Jan added: “Despite the continuing effort of the boroughs, TfL and indeed business improvement districts such as my own, this combination of street level chaos and detritus provides the perfect backdrop for other forms of anti-social behaviour to take place; reinforcing the perception that many central London streets have become unregulated spaces where anything goes.”
The clutter can be transient (such as e-bikes, rubbish bags, roadworks boards) or permanent (vandalised and redundant telephone boxes), the report stated. What to do? The report suggested that national government (if it were to grant local authorities and TfL the power to require dockless micromobility vehicles to be parked in dedicated, clearly marked bays), highway authorities (TfL and local government), and others such as BIDs, utility companies, phone and micromobility (hire bicycle) providers, all have their role to play.
Photo by Mark Rowe, Grosvenor Square, the former United States embassy being refurbished.
