Monday 24 February 2014

Furnace Green Councillors Welcome Completed Tunnel Drainage Works


Furnace Green's Councillor Carol Eade at the resurfaced Tunnel
The installation of a major new drainage system in the main Railway tunnel between Furnace Green and Maidenbower has been completed on schedule, and in time for the start of the new half-term at Oriel High.
Furnace Green Councillors Carol Eade and Duncan Crow had been working with West Sussex County Council, Crawley Borough Council and Network Rail since last autumn, to get a permanent solution to the flooding that had dogged the site. The wettest winter on record had made an occasional flooding problem into a virtually permanent flood since the exceptional rains started in December.

Furnace Green Councillor Carol Eade said “I am delighted that our efforts have paid off. Duncan Crow and I invested a lot of time and effort to bring this about as we recognised it’s important to the local community, many of whom got in touch with us. Not only have we now got an excellent drainage system that has already proved its effectiveness in last week’s rain, we’ve had it completely resurfaced too.”

Councillor Duncan Crow saidIt is great news that Volker Fitzpatrick (Network Rail’s contractor) has completed the major drainage scheme in time for the school going back. While affecting many residents of Furnace Green and Maidenbower, it had especially impacted Oriel High pupils, parents and staff from Furnace Green and further afield over the last few weeks. I am very pleased that the efforts of both Carol Eade and myself achieved such a positive outcome on behalf of our residents.”

2 comments:

Duncan Crow said...

Thank you to both the Crawley Happy Times and the Crawley Observer (so far that I have noticed) who have published this good news.

Duncan Crow said...

A whole month and one day after I reported that I had helped to secure the solution to fix this problem, the Crawley News have reported that this has happened. As usual, they have airbrushed me out of the equation. They were sent the press release and photo along with the Crawley Observer and Crawley Happy Times.

They are also peddling the myth cynically peddled by Bewbush and Ifield West County Councillor Chris Oxlade, that it wss the petition that resulted in fixing this problem. While the petition was helpful for Network Rail to see the strength of feeling, the solution was in hand and was already about to be implemented.

Chris Oxlade did absolutely nothing to bring this about and it is of course nothing to do with him with it not being the area he represents. He's just chasing some self-publicity as usual and trying to make himself look good.