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#mayguerney – ignorance, or simply contempt for pedestrians?

May Gurney have excelled themselves this time. It is not uncommon for them to obstruct pavements illegally, but they normally leave more than the 640mm they did yesterday to the right of the first sign in this picture, followed by 950mm to the left of a second one. Neat to make pedestrians weave one way and then the other. Why? did they not think, or don’t they actually care? Needless to say, both of these leave less than the mandatory 1m and advisory 1.5m of pedestrians.

I have emailed the company, explaining that I have removed the first sign into storage for health and safety reasons. Given how ineffective emails have been in the past, I have also suggested that they refund my costs, which I have calculated at £5 for the email and £5 per week, or part thereof for storage. I have reminded them that they also own me £1 for a phone call made to Anglian Water when they blocked another nearby pavement some time back. I have offered to give the money to Living Streets, and suggested that they can make a cheque out to that organisation if they prefer.

No idea if this will wake them up, but emails, complaints and blog-posts alone have achieved absolutely nothing over the past 2 years.

Update

Fyi, I have received no reply at all to my email telling them about their sign being in storage. The sign continues to rot beside my garage. By my calculations storage costs after 6 months stand at £100 with £6 administration totalling £106.00.

I think I will write to them one more time and then reuse/recycle the sign if they apparently have no further use for it!

Tags: may gurney, obstructing pavements, road works

Comments 8 Comments
Categories road works
Author Pedestrian Liberation

May Gurney – if at first you don’t succeed….

15 Jan

Taking the advice of the old saying which goes “if at first you don’t succeed then try, try and try again” I have again confiscated some of May Gurney’s signs after finding them illegally blocking the pavement (signage must always leave 1 meter clear for pedestrians). As always when I remove their signs like this I email marketing@maygurney.co.uk and tweet using the twitter handle (@maygurney) and invite them to come and collect them.

We are making slow progress though. There was no obvious effect to my complaint in October 2010 – we exchanged friendly emails but nothing changed, and then when I confiscated two illegally positioned signs a year later I didn’t even get any response at all beyond the standard automated email acknowledgement. Only after I had removed a 2nd set of dangerously positioned signs did I finally get an email and phone response promising action. They also arranged to collect the four signs that I had in storage for them by that time.

Unfortunately they are still blocking pavements so we need to keep going a little longer! In this latest incident notice that:

the road works themselves are almost entirely on private property and hardly intrude onto the pavement, let along onto the carriageway which is not affected at all (so there is no logic to warning motorists of a narrowing road)
the signs are causing far more inconvenience to pedestrians than the road works themselves (even before one of the collapsed).
oh yes, and notice that the other pavement is blocked as usual by a car, so that pavement is not easy to use either.

Two signs ilegally obstructing the pavement

Tags: "road works signage", illegal, ipswich, may gurney, road works

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Categories Bad company, disability issues, road works
Author Pedestrian Liberation

May Gurney again

9 Oct

May Gurney are continuing to leave signs blocking the pavement with less that the legal minimum of 1 meter for pedestrians. In the past I have emailed the company to complain and have also occasional repositioned them to legal positions.

Section D1.1.2 of chapter 8 of the Traffic Signs Manual states that ‘ Road works on or near a carriageway, cycleway or footway might impair the safety and free movement of vehicles, cyclists and pedestrians (particularly those with mobility and visual impairments)‘. Section D4.4.1 says that ‘in no circumstances must the width of the footway be reduced to less than 1m, preferably not less than 1.5m’.

I spotted some more signs yesterday right across a pavement close to my home used by disabled people and parents with young children. Neither of these signs left 1 meter clear and they were causing more inconvenience that the road works themselves. I contacted the Water Board for whom they were working and asked them to get May Gurney to move them within 24 hours. When May Gurney didn’t do this I removed them into safe storage to avoid injury to pedestrians and emailed the company to request that they phone me to arrange for their collection.