A Shrewsbury Severn Rotarian is up in arms at losing two consecutive nights sleep – with the threat of more sleepless nights to follow.
Most of the rooms at Harry Wilson’s home in the centre of town overlook the bus station close to which contractors are demolishing a footbridge as part of the Smithfield Road redevelopment. The footbridge is a pedestrian link from the Darwin Centre in front of the multi-storey car park and descends to the ground by the former night club. He said there was no warning that work was starting on Monday night and the first time he became aware of the demolition was a ‘terrible noise’ at 10.30 pm which resulted in the dog ‘going spare’.
Architect Harry takes up the story. “The noise was louder than fireworks. It was a constant heavy hammering which went on until 3.45 am. There were three or four pauses of 10 minutes or so during the five and a half hours of hammering. On Tuesday I went into the Darwin Centre where the council have an exhibition featuring the Riverside. I was unable to complain to the council representative, but he gave me a phone number for the contractors. The contractors said they finished at 5.00 pm and gave me the site manager’s mobile number.
I rang when the noise started again at around 11.00 pm last night and all he said was ‘nothing we can do, sorry’. I said ‘you obviously don’t care about the residents’ and he just said sorry. The hammering continued until 5.00 am and for the second night running my wife and I couldn’t sleep. Why can’t this work commence earlier, at say 5.30 pm, and finish at 11.00 pm? When planning applications which are likely to adversely affect neighbours with noise there is usually a condition that no work takes place between 8.00 pm and 8.00 am. Clearly when the council are acting on their own properties they forget about that condition and do not appear to have any regard for other people’s lives.”
Harry added: “I am at a loss as to know what to do now, other than look into the possibility of a legal injunction to stop the work.”
