Meeting with Chris Cook

Post date: 14-Feb-2013 07:33:43

Last Tuesday with Daniel and Julian we managed to talk to Christopher Cook (Service Development Manager) mainly about the sign for the WilLife Area that although included (actually squeezed in) within the Open Space works has been delayed and delayed.

The sign is very important (originally there were two of them budgeted but unplanned expenditures have resulted to one being likely unobtainable) because it would help giving the information that the area is part of the park. At the moment every time there is a problem the legitimacy of the place belonging to the Surrey Square Park is brought into question and the sign would help considerably in this sense.

Recently the latest delay was given as the proposed design seemed to not be meeting the "Southwark signage standards" but sadly not only these "standards" were never specified but nobody seemed actually to know where to look for them or whom was in charge of the designing. After Sunchia, the Groundwark London Consultant Landscape Architect, that coordinate the Open Space project managed to pinpoint Chris as the key player for the sign we had to contend to the difficulty of meeting him.

As it turned out we knew Chris. He was a member of the Council delegation in one of the Friends of Surrey Square walkabouts and recognised us. The meeting was friendly and we thanked Chris for having devoted his lunch hour to us and he apologized for the delay in seeing us due to personal constraints. We quickly sorted out the problems and were given some schedule and direct contacts with the designers.

So hopefully we should see some results in the next few weeks.