The Sewer Affair — When Public Utilities Mistook a Basement for a Backstage.
Filed: 14 February 2024
Reference: SWANK / Thames Water / PC-1816
Download PDF: 2024-02-14_Core_PC-1816_Email_ThamesWaterEmployees_ElginCrescentEvidence.pdf
Summary: Email from Polly Chromatic to multiple oversight bodies enclosing photographic proof of Thames Water operatives excavating directly outside 37 Elgin Crescent (W11 2JD) without notice or coordination, thereby providing both evidence of negligence and the best metaphor yet for local governance.
I. What Happened
• At 12:23 p.m. on 14 February 2024, Polly Chromatic wrote to Kevin Thompson (RBKC Environmental Health), attaching doorbell-camera footage of Thames Water employees performing an impromptu archaeological dig in the building’s sewer trench.
• The excavation was executed directly beneath the family’s doorway, absent warning, permit signage, or a working definition of “disturbance.”
• The correspondence was BCC’d to every regulatory body worth its acronym — RBKC Housing Monitoring, the NHS Trust Complaints Team, the Housing Ombudsman, and the Environment Agency — an audience befitting the spectacle.
• In style and substance, the email was polite, evidential, and fatal to any pretence of competence within municipal plumbing.
II. What the Document Establishes
• Evidence of unannounced public-works activity causing nuisance and safety risk.
• Proof of multi-agency notification and administrative inaction thereafter.
• Continuity in RBKC’s pattern of ignoring hazard until photographed.
• Material support for Environmental Health and Equality Act claims linked to housing and respiratory harm.
• A case study in how local authorities convert residents into documentarians.
III. Why SWANK Logged It
• Because few things capture contemporary Britain like contractors digging metaphorical and literal holes at once.
• Because infrastructure is policy made visible — and here it was visible on CCTV.
• Because this is what “joined-up government” looks like when the only thing joined is the sewer.
IV. Applicable Standards & Violations
• Public Health Act 1936 ss. 79–82 — statutory nuisance by sewer works.
• Environmental Protection Act 1990 s. 33 — duty of care in waste and works.
• Equality Act 2010 ss. 20–27 — failure to accommodate disability through environmental management.
• ECHR Art. 8 — right to peaceful enjoyment of home.
V. SWANK’s Position
This is not “routine maintenance.”
This is municipal burlesque — performed in hi-vis.
• We do not accept excavation as a form of community engagement.
• We reject the aesthetic of emergency as infrastructure.
• We archive every instance in which a spade became policy.
⟡ Formally Archived by SWANK London Ltd. ⟡
Every comma jurisdictional, every pothole political.
Because when the authorities dig too close to home, we keep the footage.
This is not a blog.
This is a legal-aesthetic instrument.
Filed with deliberate punctuation, preserved for litigation and education.
Because evidence deserves elegance — and retaliation deserves an archive.
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Unlicensed reproduction will be cited as panic, not authorship.