Camden News: Pub | Landlord | Patrick Lynskey

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Camden News - by SIMON WROE
Published: 8 January 2009

Patrick Lynskey outside the Bull and Gate pub

Pumping out gas: Landlord hit by leak outside pub’s doors

A PUB landlord says his business is being suffocated by a gas leak which has gone unfixed for more than three weeks.
Patrick Lynskey, the owner of the Bull and Gate freehouse in Highgate Road, Kentish Town, says he is still waiting for engineers to shut down the mains gas leak outside the pub – a job they started 11 days before Christmas.
Mr Lynskey, 66, is claiming compensation running into thousands of pounds for loss of earnings after National Grid workmen drilled eight large holes in the pavement on December 14, blocking the pub’s entrance.
The holes allow the gas to escape into the atmosphere instead of Mr Lynskey’s establishment but they do not stop the leak.
“Surely gas escaping is an emergency,” said Mr Lynskey. “It’s got to be unhealthy and costly. It should have been dealt with much sooner. They know it’s escaping but they’re doing nothing about it.”
A National Grid spokeswoman said they had been too busy to deal with the gas leak. “Over the last two to three weeks there have been an unusually high number of calls to the emergency service,” she added. “This has been due to the change in the weather conditions. You can be assured that at no time would we have left an unsafe situation.
“Our engineer took the decision that the best course of action for dealing with this particular gas escape was to vent the building and excavate at the roadside with a view to allowing the gas to vent into the atmosphere.
“This has been monitored daily until such a time as full repair could be implemented.”

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