In the last two days residents in Edgware, Mill Hill and even parts of Hendon have struggled to get to work, attend hospital appointments, take their children to school, take part in examinations and even been prevented from attending a job interview as a result of roadworks conducted by Transport for London approaching the Apex Corner roundabout.
Local residents have periodically complained about the congestion generated by this roundabout and the difficulty for local traffic to get on to it but the current situation defies belief.
When Matthew was the Cabinet Member for Environment on Barnet Council, he regularly worked with the GLA member, the local authority and Transport for London (TfL) to ensure that disruption was kept to a minimum.
However, that arrangement seems to have ended and Matthew has stepped in as the Member of Parliament and written to the Commissioner for TfL to seek that changes are made to this current set of works.
Matthew said: “I appreciate that repair and maintenance work on highways must be undertaken from time to time and that with this comes a degree of inconvenience, but the planning for works of this scale is currently proving to be a disaster and almost the entire constituency is gridlocked.
"It is not normally the role of the Member of Parliament to get involved in such issues but on this occasion someone needs to intervene and try and ensure that common sense prevails over these works. I look forward to receiving positive proposals from the Commissioner to mitigate the effects of the works.”