Agenda item

PUBLIC LIFT REPORT

Report of the City Surveyor.

Minutes:

The Committee received a report of the City Surveyor containing details of the three public escalator/lifts that were in service less than 95% of the time.

 

The City Surveyor regretfully reported that the lift at Speed House was still out of service and required a new drive board which was set to be delivered this week. It was hoped that the lift would then return to service. Long term, a programme to refurbish the lift was being brought forward to February 2019. This would render the lift out of service for a period of approximately 3 months but would hopefully reduce the number of occasions on which the lift experienced technical failures/difficulties.

 

The City Surveyor went on to report that a £250,000 project to refurbish and upgrade all of the City’s public lifts was also planned in order to make all of them as reliable as possible.

 

A Member questioned how much routine maintenance was carried out on the public lifts. The City Surveyor reported that routine maintenance was carried out fortnightly on all public lifts. Consideration had previously been given to increasing this to weekly maintenance but it had been concluded that there would be no real benefit in doing so.

 

A Member commented that the Speed House lift had been poorly designed from the outset. Another Member commented on the running costs of the public lifts being more expensive than they should be as a result of poor design and questioned whether the City Corporation had any control over this going forward, in terms of specifying what standards developers should be meeting in the first place. The City Surveyor reported that a public lift specification as now in place and could be shared with developers to ensure that all future public lift installations met the City Corporation’s criteria.

 

A Member questioned whether the City Surveyor stockpiled spare parts and vital components for the public lifts, particularly those that were difficult to procure. The Deputy Chairman added that the Chief Executive of Land Securities had recently announced that they had taken the decision to do just this in view of Brexit and the potential difficulties that may pose around securing parts from abroad speedily. The City Surveyor reported that some critical spare parts were stockpiled but that it was not possible to store all of the spare parts required for all on the City’s public lifts. She added that it was hoped that the lift refurbishment programme would reduce the need for this going forward. With regard to the Millennium Inclinator, where many of the parts were imported, a lot of spare parts were already being stored at Guildhall and the City Surveyor would continue to stockpile these.

 

RECEIVED.

Supporting documents: