Every day I cycle down Monmouth Street in London’s Covent Garden to and from my office. It is one of London’s loveliest shopping streets and you can tell, from the care with which they decorate it often, that its retail occupiers really enjoy its character and beauty. For quite some time now the surface of the street, laid with lovely granite sets, has been a ghastly mess caused by utility repairs, the laying of commercial cable infrastructure and temporary remediation of potholes with ugly black tarmac. It is easy to think that there are more important things to worry about at this time of pandemic strife but I’m afraid I want to find room.

A tweet I wrote about it with a picture I took on my way to work one day was liked, re-tweeted and commented on over 1,300 times – more than anything I have ever tweeted. Most of the tweets suggested reasons for why it was in such a state: cost of repair at a time of economic uncertainty, laziness of those doing the digging-up, lack of care on the part of Camden council to compel those making the mess to clear it up. Whoever is at fault, it’s a perfect example of what happens when the detail is forgotten.

Often the detail in the broth gets spoiled because there are too many cooks. Whose job is it to make sure the guttering is the right quality, or the doorknobs on the houses are as beautiful as those originally specified by the architect? Is it the new delivery architect hired under the design-and-build contract or the client who, under the same contract, does not have the direct commercial relationship with that architect? Is it the contractor, whose imperative is to minimise cost?

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