NEW STREET GREENHOUSE COMEDY OF ERRORS

25-08-2006

Repairs are finally underway on the Birmingham Greenhouse - the information kiosk on New Street - but serious questions remain about why it's taken so long.

It sounds like something a cheap stand-up might deliver to warm up the crowd at the Glee Club - “How long does it take a Brummie to change a pane of glass”?

The answer - in the case of the New Street information greenhouse - is many, many weeks and three days.

Granted, that's not much of a punchline - but in truth, the joke is on the city's taxpayers who still haven't had a decent explanation for why a showpiece building designed to sell our local attractions has been left in such a poor condition for so long.

Here's what we know.

The kiosk - which is maintained by the council but staffed by workers from Marketing Birmingham - has had a large crack in it for at least four months, and appears to have been held together at the top by gaffer tape.

All in all, a bit of an eyesore, and a pretty poor advert for the city to visitors.

Incidentally, we're not sure that a glass building that you can't actually see into is a great idea anyway - surely the whole point is to appear welcoming, but as many of the panes are obscured it only achieves the opposite effect.

Baffling.

Anyway, that's a debate for another day, but as long as the thing is there, we may as well make the most of it.

Now to our layman's eye, all that is needed to make the repair is a new pane…simple. Or so we thought.

So why has it taken at least four months to buy one pieceof glass - has the West Midlands run out of glaziers?

And why has it had to be sourced in Austria of all places?

It's also puzzling that what appears on the face of it to be a relatively simply job is taking three days. You could get double glazing for all of the hothouses in the Botanical Gardens in that time.

Then there's the question of how much it cost.

Birmingham Council is refusing to tell us, hiding behind the claim that it's a “contractual” issue.

Bollocks - it's a taxpayers issue, and people have the right to know what's being done in their name, with their money.

Local authorities - like the glass - should be transparent.

And ironically when they aren't we can see right through them.

And our observation is that somebody, somewhere is covering up.