Local London news doesn't get much of a look-in these days. Journalists are expensive, local papers are threadbare rags and most residents are more pre-occupied with national stories and celebrity gossip anyway. In an attempt to turn the tide I'm going to write about a London council news story but with the name of the borough deleted, in the hope that you'll read on just in case the story is about where you live. It very probably isn't, and you'll breathe a sigh of relief when I reveal all at the end, but what if you're one of the unlucky ones?
council launches library cuts consultation
Yesterday council launched a consultation inviting people who live, work or study in the borough to give their views on which aspects of the Library Service should be trimmed to save money. The government continues to cut local government funding so tough decisions have to be made as costs inexorably rise. Like other councils has a legal duty to provide "a comprehensive and efficient library service", but precisely what this means isn't well defined so further trimming is always possible. Given that has the 3rd highest library provision in London, legally there's plenty of scope to be more average.
The consultation proposes a number of different options, each of which could be implemented singly or in combination with others to save even more money. Potential annual savings are shown in brackets. The proposed implementation date is "late spring/early summer 2021".
Option 1: Reduce opening hours at all council managed libraries a) Close each library for one day (or two half-days) per week (£150,000) b) End the late evening opening hours currently offered once a week (£35,000) c) End Sunday morning opening at the Central Library (£15,000)
's libraries currently open six days a week, which is good going for 2020, so maybe knocking one day off wouldn't matter. It would also be a different day of the week for each library, easing the overall inconvenience for the wider community. However in one case that day would be Saturday, and if are also killing off evenings and the sole Sunday opening then that's not good news for anyone who works 9-5.
Option 2: Operate libraries for half of the day on a selfserve basis (£150,000)
This'll be technology taking away people's jobs again. It's also coronavirus's fault for proving that 's libraries can function without the need for staff to handle books. Don't worry, says the consultation, "there would be an appropriate security presence to ensure visitors feel safe", but lower-paid security staff are unlikely to be able to provide recommendations or track down that elusive Wilkie Collins.
Option 3: Reduce the number of events and activities delivered by library staff (£0)
This isn't a separate option, it's a necessary result of any cuts made as part of options 1 and 2 because fewer staff means fewer activities. The consultation questionnaire includes the telling question "Would you be interested in volunteering in libraries to assist with the delivery of events and activities?" with the obvious follow-on that "if volunteer uptake is not sufficient... some events and activities may be discontinued." Storytime, Knitting Club and Living Well with Dementia are not sacrosanct.
Option 4: Introduce appointment system at the Local Studies and Archives Centre (£30,000-40,000)
Having specialist staff sitting around on spec isn't cost effective, so pre-booking would remove the need for a permanent presence at the enquiry desk, and that's another salary or two trimmed.
Option 5: Reduce or end council funding for Community Managed Libraries (up to £200,000)
has several community libraries, spun off in 2016 to save cash while continuing to offer provision in smaller communities. Current funding arrangements end on 31st March 2021, so the perfect opportunity to slash funds is on its way. The consultation notes that "if financial support was withdrawn there may still be an option for these libraries to raise funds from other sources", and if they couldn't then "the council would seek to find an alternative community provider who was able to operate with less, or no, financial support" but in the real world this kind of approach would almost certainly "ultimately result in closure".
Option 6: Do nothing
Every council consultation in a time of austerity includes this option, then goes on to explain why it isn't really an option. The positive spin in this case is that the cuts are an opportunity "to build on new digital opportunities and support changing patterns of usage", but the reality is that "faces unprecedented financial challenges from the increasing pressure to protect, and meet rising demand for, essential services such as adults and children’s social care." Capped budgets have to be balanced somehow, and care will always trump libraries.
Option 7: Other ideas
In case 's brainstorming has been insufficiently wide-ranging, the consultation states that "we would welcome suggestions for any other ideas on how the council can either reduce the cost of the Library Service or generate additional income from its library assets to offset costs." This'll encourage some to propose fruitloop savings based on personal prejudice, and others to scream that the council absolutely must not cut precious libraries under any circumstances despite this now being untenable. Don't expect any of these additional suggestions to be taken up.
It's a sad world in which has to ask residents how best to cut library services, in this case to save perhaps £600,000 a year, which is the price of a couple of nice flats in the area, because central government remains intent on throttling local government spending. Austerity's been squeezing councils for ten years now, and under the current government in the current challenging economic circumstances has a lot further to go.
It's not just Bexley, and it's not just libraries, where these kinds of difficult decisions are having to be made. But there is a limit to how far councils can salami slice local services until they fall apart, and this particular local news story probably resonates wherever you happen to live.
Where are your nearest tunnels? That's proper tunnels, tunnels you could actually walk or travel through (trespass nothwithstanding). If you live in the countryside they could be dozens of miles away. If you live in central London the tube might run beneath your flat. I've done some digging, metaphorically, and uncovered mine.
My nearest tunnel: Crossrail(less than 100m)
The closest tunnel to my home belongs to London's flagship new railway, the one that isn't open yet and may not be for some time. Tunnelling machines Jessica and Ellie burrowed their way from Stepney to Stratford eight years ago and just missed me, passing unexpectedly close to where I'm sitting now. According to Crossrailplanning documents one of the twin bores crosses Bow Road at the junction with Fairfield Road, the other outside the former Kings Arms pub and ATS Euromaster garage. They then pass underneath the western side of Grove Hall Park, cross the A12 at the end of Wrexham Road, duck under the River Lea and emerge alongside Pudding Mill Lane station. At present the only people down there are engineers readying the track and drivers testing software, but one day millions of people will speed underneath Bow without ever seeing it. I look forward to standing on top of them.
My 2nd nearest tunnel: Ham and Wick Sewer(150m)
In 1897 the London County Council presented plans to the Main Drainage Committee for a new sewer connecting Hackney Wick to Abbey Mills. I know it ran roughly parallel to the river Lea, although I haven't been able to determine whether it's large enough to permit human access, at least hypothetically. This sewer caused major headaches for Crossrail by existing at precisely the point they needed trains to be rising up to the surface, and at one point there were expensive plans to divert it under Grove Hall Park. Thankfully Crossrailchanged their minds and strengthenedthe pipes instead, avoiding the imposition of half a dozen disruptive worksites locally, and the original Victorian alignment flows on.
My 3rd nearest tunnel: Bow Interchange(200m)
Not only does the Bow Roundabout have a flyover it also has an underpass. Traffic on the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road doesn't want to faff around with lights and signals so civil engineers gifted them direct passage underneath the roundabout, a privilege they retain fifty years later. Walking through the tunnel's not allowed, indeed would be terrifyingly dangerous, and regular buses don't go this way either. That means I've only ever driven through it as a passenger in a car, and even then only rarely because this is normally where you'd turn off, so it's all a bit of a mystery to me. Some might claim that this is an underpass and not a tunnel because it doesn't have official tunnel signage at each end, in which case my nearest (motorway-grade) road tunnel is the Eastway Tunnel at Hackney Wick, well over a mile to the north.
My 4th nearest tunnel: Lea Navigation(225m)
Not many of us can boast a canal tunnel less than five minutes from our front door, although this one's not your traditional narrow brick-lined tunnel, more a dark chamber under concrete slabs created fifty years ago when the Bow Roundabout was plonked on top. I hope it counts as a 'proper' tunnel - it ought to given it takes a minute to walk through. The floatingtowpath added in 2011 is either gloomily atmospheric or a mugger's paradise, depending.
My 5th nearest tunnel: Central line(250m)
The Central line also makes a subterranean dash through my part of Bow without stopping, indeed Mile End to Stratford is the third longest gap between stations on the entire line. The tunnels break off from Bow Road near Bow Road station, then veer north of Bow Bus Garage before joining the mainline alignment, with a telltale ventilation shaft beside the A12 to mark their passing. So very near and yet so far.
My 6th nearest tunnel: Low Level Sewer No 2(300m)
When Joseph Bazalgette contrived his pan-Londonseweragesystem, he built three interceptor sewers north of the Thames - the High Level, the Middle Level and the Low Level. Low Level Sewer No 2 was added as back up thirty years later, draining the unmentionables of Hammersmith and Kensington via Piccadilly, the Strand, the City and Whitechapel on their way to Abbey Mills. It's this sewer that famously clogged with a fatberg expunged in 2017. Round here the sewer's passing is marked by a stinkpipe at the junction of St Leonard's Street and Priory Street, a particularly tall pipe designed to carry any gas as high as possible. The Palace of Westminster's excrement follows Low Level Sewer No 1 via Devons Road, a little further to the south. [map of local sewers]
My 7th nearest tunnel: DLR/Crossways Estate(350m)
The DLR enters a 200m-long tunnel just south of Bow Church station. This doesn't need to exist, the land's all flat, but a concrete shell was deemed useful in order to build some social housing on top. Originally these were the maisonettes of Holyhead Close, until regeneration in 2014 reworked the area into something much more estate-agent-friendly. Most of the tunneltop is now back gardens, although a couple of small blocks of flats sit astride the railway on Trevithick Way. It's quite the model for housing densification, should TfL become increasingly desperate for cash.
I reckon that's a pretty good haul for tunnels within quarter of a mile from home: three railways, two sewers, a dual carriageway and a navigable river. Even better four are publicly accessible, one will be eventually and only the sewers are generally off limits. And it doesn't stop there...
My 8th nearest tunnel: Low Level Sewer No 1(500m) My 9th nearest tunnel:District line(600m) My 10th nearest tunnel:Northern Outfall Sewer(700m)
Urbex, or Urban Exploration, is the exploration of manmade structures, usually abandoned ruins or hidden components of the manmade environment. It can be a bitdangerous, plus it usually involves trespassing by going inside things you shouldn't, so isn't necessarily recommended for the conscientious risk-averse citizen. Dark spaces, head-torches and illicit break-ins aren't for everyone. But you can still get a frisson of excitement if you lower your expectations by venturing inside something mostly unused, still quite gloomy but potentially legal. I call it Mild Urbex.
Mild Urbex - the Abbott Road Tunnel
When the Blackwall Tunnel Approach Road was built fifty years ago its dual carriageway severed a thin slice of Tower Hamlets between the A12 and the Lea. Mostly this didn't matter because nobody lived there, but the Aberfeldy Estate was an exception and merited an underpass to help residents access the rest of the borough. Abbott Road was reengineered at its eastern end to include a lengthy ramp down to a short tunnel, beyond which a second ramp rose parallel to the northbound carriageway. Today this shortcut operates in one direction only, is hardly used and has never had a pavement. It seemed the ideal darkspace for some Mild Urbex.
The tunnel's descent into irrelevance began in 2011 when TfL addeda set of traffic lights up top on the A12 - the only such lights between the Redbridge roundabout and the mouth of the Blackwall Tunnel. This allowed local traffic to cross the dual carriageway without using the underpass, so one lane was hatched over and vehicles restricted to northbound passage only. A decade later very little traffic comes up the ramp so it's easy to wander off the official pavement at the Zetland Street junction and jaywalk brazenly down... on the hatched side, of course.
This ramp's really long, well over a hundred metres all told, engendering an appropriate sense of impending doom as you approach the distant portal. It's not long before you've dipped out of sight of the cars, vans and lorries rumbling above, the isolation becoming increasingly tangible. Beneath your feet the tarmac turns a faded shade of red, a leftover from when this was a contraflow lane for the 309 busroute towards Canning Town. Southbound buses now take the high level route via the new lights and the (possibly jammed) A12, whereas northbound buses continue to venture through the tunnel. A redundant traffic island keeps everyone in their place.
Deep breath... we have arrived.
The tunnel ahead is concrete-roofed, concrete-walled and curved. It's also illuminated by sodium lights, which is useful if you haven't thought to bring a torch but has also given countless generations of pigeons somewhere convenient to perch. Brief crescents of murky white droppings hug the wall at regular intervals, adding a proper Urbex vibe, but are easily dodged. On the inside of the bend a metal grille shields an automatic fire hose reel which looks like it's been here since the tunnel opened. No security cameras are visible, presumably because this entire set-up predates such paranoia, suggesting that your slightly transgressive behaviour is not being recorded.
Against the outer curve are a couple of abandoned traffic cones, one stacked loosely on top of the other. Alongside is a locked door into some mysterious chamber hollowed out beneath the southbound carriageway. A yellow warning triangle is the sole clue as to what might lie inside... that and a power cable of some kind snaking down the wall from above and disappearing within. A visitor intent on making trouble might attempt to force the handle, but this is Mild Urbex so such behaviour cannot be condoned.
After perhaps forty metres of minor peril the unpavemented tunnel emerges into reassuring daylight. The eastbound ramp rises straight ahead, two of the original lanes plainly painted over. A much-extended kerb at the foot of the slope forces any oncoming traffic to keep left, which is fortunate otherwise there'd have been nothing to stop a speeding vehicle hugging the inside of the curve around a blind bend and accidentally running you down. Fear not, the hatched area to your left will eventually merge with the barriers on Abbott Road, delivering you safely into the heart of the Aberfeldy Estate.
You could now attempt to break into the deserted special needs school on Bromley Hall Road, or try to gain access to the demolished gasworks on Leven Road, even nip back through the subway to the Balfron Tower and sneak past the builders to reach the upper floors. But those would be daring escapades worthy of brazen adventurers seeking fresh perspectives on city living, hence proper Urbex, and a brief jaywalk through a forgotten semi-operational tunnel far better encapsulates the Mild Urbex experience.
