17.02.2009

Stuck boom lifts

Two aerial lifts stuck on a roundabout in Hemel Hempstead, UK has caused embarrassment to the local council.

Dacorum Borough Council hired the two booms from Milton Keynes based Elavation to put the finishing touches to the Phoenix Gateway a major sculpture commissioned as a symbol of recovery after the Buncefield fire.

However the lift operators managed to get the two units seriously bogged down in extremely soft ground on the roundabout preventing them from driving off site under their own power.
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One of the stuck machines

Closing the road to allow a crane to remove them will apparently take up to seven weeks In the meantime the units remain on rent. Although the council is now claiming that it is the rental company’s fault.

The situation was raised as an example of the council’s incompetence following the announcement of a number of cost cutting measures. The Labour opposition has called the affair a fiasco claiming that council managers should have “employed people who had the skills to operate the machines properly”.
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The other mired machine with the Phoenix Gateway sculpture

The borough council is refusing to comment on the costs it is running up blaming the weather. A spokesman is reported as saying: "The council does not accept responsibility for the removal of the cherry pickers, and is disputing the hire charges. We are considering legal action against the contractor to secure the removal of the cherry pickers."

A call to the rental company Elavation has revealed that the council has stopped paying the rental charges and is refusing to accept calls from the company or help in any way. In the meantime the machines remain stuck on the roundabout.

Vertikal Comment

On what basis the council thinks that it is not responsible for extricating the lifts remains a mystery. It rented the machines, put them onto a marooned site which had not been prepared in any way to take mobile equipment and then managed to get them stuck good and proper.

The rental company can not get a truck onto the roundabout as the ground is so saturated and with the lifts bottomed out, thanks to the operators spinning the tyres until they were, it is not possible to drive them off.

The council does not have the power to close the road without notice to allow a truck to approach the units and winch them off. A serious off road vehicle such as a Unimog fitted with good sized crane could handle it. Or for the rental company needs turn up with a winch vehicle, stop the traffic and quickly pull the units off… one at a time. But this is not legal.

The problem is that the co-operation of the council is required, but having been accused of incompetence it has chosen to bury its head in the sand, in the hope that it will go away. When it comes to a legal battle, it will almost certainly have no concerns about burning taxpayers money to fight until the owner gives up or runs out of money. It looks as though the opposition party and council tax payers need to highlight the matter and shame the council into action,