Agenda item

Report of the Director of the Built Environment.

The Committee considered a report of the Director of the Built Environment in respect of an application made by Thames Tideway in consultation with Thames Water Utilities Limited to name new publicly accessible City walkway and associated open space located at the site of the Thames Tideway Tunnel project along the river foreshore to the west of Blackfriars Bridge as ‘Bazalgette Embankment’.

A Member commented that this would be quite a significant new piece of open space and that he would ask Members to support the proposed naming of this in honour of Sir Joseph Bazalgette. He suggested, however, that the proposals around a statue should be carefully considered at another time.

A Member questioned whether Officers were certain that Sir Joseph Bazalgette was an appropriate figure after whom to name this space given concerns highlighted by the Black Lives Matter movement over the appropriateness of some statues in the City. Officers reported that they had undertaken due diligence on this matter and that Sir Joseph Bazalgette was a very successful, professional Victorian engineer who spent 40 years working for the London Metropolitan Board of Works following his graduation. He had no other trading or business background/interests and was responsible for building a sewage network which had saved thousands of lives of Londoners by preventing cholera outbreaks. His further family history had showed that some ancestors had, inevitably, been involved in colonial trading activities but the individual Sir Joseph Bazalgette was not a businessman and it was appropriate to recognise him as a successful engineer.

RESOLVED – That, the name Bazalgette Embankment be approved and a

statutory order be issued.