Distancing measures starting to crack

WE’VE had to make a lot of allowances and sacrifices during the pandemic, especially early on, when we were fumbling around with what we laughingly referred to as a “new normal”.

And part of getting used to living among a deadly virus has been finding space to practice social distancing.

That’s tricky in a town that’s been turned into a bustling thoroughfare over many decades, despite its humble beginnings as a coaching destination.

The trouble is, our streets are narrow. And the pavements are even narrower. That’s probably why Ashbourne was chosen to pioneer Derbyshire’s approach for widening pavements, and encouraging pedestrians to mix more closely with traffic.

Back in the days when we were just starting to emerge from our lockdown hideaways, it wasn’t so much of an issue.

But now that we’re all busy again and the roads are back to being clobbered by lorries and constant traffic, the cracks in our social-distancing system are very much starting to show.

It was, of course, we were told at the time, a series of temporary measures.

But with no clear way of telling when we’ll be able to lift our “temporary measures”, we do need to make sure we’re able to live alongside them.

And the town council this week is quite rightly starting to tire of the problems that are being caused by a network of unsightly water-filled bollards and other “temporary” structures that are far too easy to abuse.

From the outset, the county council said that we might be able to replace these plastic barriers with planters.

And we’ve heard that, in Leicester, the temporary bollards are nailed down.

Let’s hope the county council has something equally useful up its sleeves and it can sort out or street furniture problems.

Because if they’re getting chucked in the river on a regular basis, there’s clearly something wrong.