Agenda item

Report of the City Surveyor.

The Committee considered a public lift report of the City Surveyor.

A Member reiterated the point that the statistics provided within the report on lift operation did not seem to accord with their own experiences. He therefore encouraged Members to take note of instances when they were aware of any lifts that were out of operation and to report this to Officers, perhaps via a separate, dedicated email address, so that this could be monitored and compared with the data provided here going forward. Another Member suggested that use of technology and the installation of webcams and the like might be more helpful and less labour intensive for this purpose going forward.

Another Member stated that the statistics as to outages frequently presented here were reprehensible and questioned why more robust repairs were not being undertaken in response to this.

A Member commented that future redevelopments near the riverside really ought to consider level access given the frequent failure of lifts such as those at Blackfriars Bridge and to effectively design out these expensive problems.

The City Surveyor reported that the statistics within the report were being by automatic monitoring taking place on the lifts maintained by the City Corporation. It was widely accepted that the lifts maintained by the City were not operating in a way that was considered acceptable and Members were informed that the age of the lifts as well as the availability and speed of availability of parts through suppliers were both key issues here. Members were informed that Officers would seek to review the age, outages and actions required to bring each individual lift back into service and include information on this within the next report to this Committee. Officers also undertook to review the content of the report wholesale going forward to ensure that it was as useful and informative for Members as possible and generally more comprehensive.

A Member emphasised the need to rectify these issues with renewed urgency and spoke of how the Committee had frequently been told of issues around age and parts for many years now.

RECEIVED.