Since June 2016 residents from the Kew Bridge area have been waiting on tenterhooks? Why you might ask? Well in 2016 the local council announced significant road works would be taking place on the bridge for a number of purposes. Primarily the local community were made aware that safety issues had been identified with the service bay cover slabs under Kew Bridge's footways. These slabs were in need of urgent replacement largely due to the fact that they cover important services such as gas mains and water mains. Additionally it was speculated that they may fail under weighty wheel loads.

The proposed road works were expected to start on Monday 25th July. and to take approximately 8 weeks,  finishing on Sunday 25th September, already home owners in Kew were stressed about the implications of this. The traffic over Kew Bridge can be bad at the best of times and its movement controls the traffic in much of Kew and the wider area, delays originating on Kew Bridge have been known to cause problems all the way into Richmond and in these instances traffic on Kew Road often comes to a complete standstill. 
But the proposed dates did not come to delivery and by October 2016 the people of Kew were told they would have to wait yet longer for a definitive date until TFL had completed further survey work.

Early this January the work finally started, though there were constant disruptions and the pedestrian route over the bridge became slightly more difficult, work seems so far to be on track and is expected to be fully finished by March. 
However some residents of Kew are not content, one school girl commented that it took her '30 minutes to get down Kew Road on the bus because of the Kew Bridge traffic' whilst another more senior member of the Kew community called it a 'disturbance' and a 'nuisance'. 
Needless to say all members of the Kew community will be relieved when the work is finally finished and just hope it stays on track!

Aurelia Baldwin,

Young Reporter,

Surbiton High School