Builders on a major Bermondsey site whose developers have applied for extended hours worked on Sunday (June 13), according to local residents – despite this being against both the current rules and the new timetable they have suggested.
Many local residents were already against the extended building hours that Tide asked Southwark Council for last month for its student housing block at 272 St James’s Road. The developer wanted to put builders on staggered shifts from 8am-9pm, Monday-Friday and up to 6pm on Saturdays.
Tide said this would help builders keep to social distancing rules while getting back on track to finish the building by the end of August, when 250 students are supposed to move in. Covid-19 has delayed progress on the building, the developer said.
Locals argue this would be a huge disruption to their daily lives, on top of the “unbearable” noise they are already enduring.
Bermondsey: locals in ‘uproar’ as developer asks to keep builders onsite until 9pm for three months
Old Kent Road ward councillors also spoke out against the proposals, as we reported last week. Cllrs Evelyn Akoto, Richard Livingstone and Michael Situ back up claims that builders were already coming to the site outside the agreed building hours.
Neither the current building schedule nor the timetable Tide wants to move to would let them build on Sundays or public holidays. And yet locals said they were disturbed by builders this Sunday.
One man told the News he went to the site on Sunday to remonstrate with the builders. Another local said in an objection to the application for longer working hours that the alleged rule breaking “speaks volumes about the total disregard they have for those most affected by the building noise & pollution.”
Tide did not respond to requests for comment this week or last week.