What East Putney residents initially welcomed as a long-overdue improvement – the cleaning and repainting of the two railway bridges over Upper Richmond Road – has turned into a week of sleepless nights with a further six to come. “It’s hell on earth,” one told Putney.news.
Charlotte has a young child. She and her partner take turns not wearing earplugs so one of them can hear their son. They have started going to bed at 8pm to get two hours’ sleep before the noise begins. She is still awake at 5am.
“It feels like an immense level of torment has been thrown onto us by the council this week without warning,” she told us. The jet-washers run from 10pm to 5am, Monday to Friday. The council confirmed to Charlotte that this is the “noisiest part of the works.”
Charlotte has contacted the council, her MP and the council leader. The noise continues. According to the council, all the residents where she lives were notified by post about the works – so far she has been unable to find anyone that recalls being told. When she eventually tracked a copy of the letter down, it stated that the works would end at midnight. They run until 5am.
Inundated with complaints, the council said it had added acoustic shielding to the generator. It made little difference.
“Last night they claimed to have put acoustic shielding on their generators as well as other mitigators and yet I was still awake through the night even whilst wearing ear plugs,” Charlotte wrote. “They haven’t replied to the fact the letter they sent out said work would end by midnight yet they’re actually going on until 5am.”
Several days in, she filmed the noise from inside her seventh-floor flat.
The works, which include jet-washing the brickwork, repainting the bridges and their underpasses, adding pigeon-proofing and installing new ‘East Putney’ signage on both structures, follow an eight-year wait for improvements that were first promised in 2016. Network Rail owns the bridges. Wandsworth Council sent the notification letter to residents.
Putney.news contacted both Network Rail and Wandsworth Council on Tuesday with questions about the discrepancy between the letter’s stated end time and the actual working hours. Neither has responded. Charlotte says she’s had the same treatment: “They’ve just stop replying.”
If you are affected
Residents in Thamesfield ward, on the Thames side of Upper Richmond Road, can contact their ward councillors directly: Cllr Ethan Brooks (cllr.e.brooks@wandsworth.gov.uk), Cllr James Jeffreys (cllr.j.jeffreys@wandsworth.gov.uk) and Cllr John Locker (cllr.j.locker@wandsworth.gov.uk). East Putney ward councillors, whose ward borders the site, are Cllr Finna Ayres (cllr.f.ayres@wandsworth.gov.uk), Cllr George Crivelli (cllr.g.crivelli@wandsworth.gov.uk) and Cllr Ravi Govindia (cllr.r.govindia@wandsworth.gov.uk).
Fleur Anderson MP can be contacted at fleur.anderson.mp@parliament.uk.
Network Rail’s public enquiries line is 03457 11 41 41.
Wandsworth Council’s environmental health team handles construction noise complaints. Verify current contact details on the council website before submitting.
The mad rush to get projects completed before the local elections ..
Standard elections manoeuvres by those is power.
As is residents cant see through this ..
Hell on earth?? Yes the council should respond, but at least your discomfort will soon be over. Unlike the poor souls suffering so much more in the far too numerous war zones.
Thanks for the comment. ‘Hell on earth’ is a phrase we chose for our headline to capture how exhausted these residents felt. It wasn’t meant as a literal global comparison. We’d gently push back on the idea that expressing local distress requires first auditing all the world’s suffering. Putney residents are entitled to complain about sleepless nights, just as people everywhere are entitled to complain about theirs.