Opinion : Over a year after work started the Old Town Hall is still under repair

You may remember that back on Friday 16th January 2015 yours truly wrote a blog entitled ‘When will Wycombe’s Old Town Hall get a proper roof?‘.

The other day, while on my regular lunchtime time walk around Wycombe town centre, I happened to venture past the Old Town Hall. To my amazement the scaffolding in still up and the roof isn’t finished even though we are well into July 2015.

Surely this is some kind of joke?

It doesn’t take this long to put a roof on a building indeed a gang of cowboy contractors from Eastern Europe can re-roof an ex-council house in Castlefield in just a few hours.

Admittedly there are now some tiles on the roof of the Old Town Hall but progress is so slow that it defies belief.

Who is paying for all this work? If its Joe Council Tax payer then I pity him.

Works on the building have now been going on for over a year indeed an article published on the Wycombe District Council website on the Wednesday 28th May 2014 went on to say that ‘the amount of slates required for the Old Town Hall roof will take some months to produce‘ and ‘in the meantime, the deteriorating roof has been stripped and given a temporary waterproof overcoat‘. The re-slating work was expected to be undertaken in the autumn of 2014.

Well, the autumn of 2014 has been and gone. Christmas 2014 has been and gone too….

The scaffolding has been on the Old Town Hall so long that it has become a sight we are used to indeed it wouldn’t surprise me if the scaffolding was given listed status as its been there so long!

When walking past the other day yours truly was shocked to see some gawdy advertising banners attached to the scaffolding covering the front of the magnificent building (see picture above).

In my opinion such hideous advertising on a lovely building as absolutely awful. I doubt if you would see such a sight on a building under repair in Marlow. So why do the buildings in Wycombe have to be treated this way?

The new tiles may take time to produce delaying the repair work but taking the roof off a listed building without having the new tiles to put back on is bad enough but with works dragging on for well over a year must surely be complete madness.

I do hope the repair works to the roof are finished soon and once again we can see the Old Town Hall in all its glory. The sooner the unsightly advertising hoarding is gone the better too!

What do you think?

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