Red-faced council bosses must wish they could turn back time over the Eastgate Clock ‘clock-up’ but unfortunately this is not the first time things have gone awry.
As with any large organisation employing thousands of people, the best laid plans won’t always work out as in the case of our famous clock where an embarrassing error this week led the Roman numerals to be printed the wrong way round on a temporary protective cover.
Cheshire West and Chester Council spokesman Ian Callister said: “All a bit of a ‘clock-up really’ and obviously a collector’s item – but those who want to capture it for posterity better be quick. Time will not be allowed to march backwards for very long.”
But do you remember last year when CWaC contractors had to ‘stay behind after class’ for making a bad spelling mistake in the ‘School – keep clear’ sign painted on the road outside Highfield Primary School in Blacon Point Road. After resurfacing the stretch of road in front of the school gate, workmen spelled ‘clear’ as ‘claer’ in bright yellow paint.
This mishap came just months after council workmen painted yellow zig zag lines on the road outside a site for older people’s accommodation in Newton, believing it was still a school, even though Woodfield Primary School closed in 2008 and was later demolished.
Then there was the time that two bright yellow bus shelters disappeared in the dead of night from the newly revamped Princess Street bus exchange. The council claimed they’d be stolen but the contractors who installed them said they hadn’t been paid the full amount they were owed.
CWaC was praised for bringing a test case against Sean Alex Ellman and his company for selling legal highs at Dr Hermans Hed shop in Eastgate Row but the case collapsed when it transpired trading standards had not tested the chemical substances involved.
District judge Brigid Knight told Chester magistrates court: “I’m afraid this case has fallen down pretty much at the outset because of the failure to analyse the product, the subject of the charge. I would have expected chapter and verse on exactly what is in them.”
CWaC is heavily reliant on outside contractors doing their job properly but is supposed to check the work. This didn’t appear to have happened when the council and its partner organisation Chester Renaissance commissioned a £7,000 sign in Eastgate Street promoting Bakers’ Row’. The apostrophe was placed before the ‘s’ wrongly suggesting there had been only one baker. The council later confirmed its supplier made the mistake and would rectify the sign at ‘no cost’ to the authority.
