Londoners should feel safe and secure when walking the streets of London from anything happening from under their feet but alas this is not the case with an increase in pavement explosions.
From a FOI request l made to the HSE it was been established that since 2015 the incidents of pavement explosions have increased. We have had just over 50 incidents in London over the two years since August 2015 while we had just over 80 between 2010-2015! A clear increase of incidences.
UKPowerNetworks didn’t respond when l asked them originally after Oxford St incident last summer, so l went to the HSE. The results explain why not. The number of incidents have actually gone up and its only a matter time before we have a serious injury.
In 2015 when l first asked about the exploding pavement issue, it was mostly a Central London problem in places like NW1,SW1,WC1 etc. Not surprisingly it is where the cables under the pavements are most intensively used and with the on set of plug in points for electric cars more so probably.
This is best illustrated with the exposed cables along Warwick Avenue, W9 as shown above. Clearly these exposed telecommunications cables should be covered immediately yet since l reported them at the beginning of the year to BT, we have yet to see the works undertaken to make sure thats the public are safe and secure when walking along the avenue.