8:00pm Friday 4th January 2008
By Jeremy Grimaldi
AN ENGINEERING firm has distanced itself from claims made by an ex-employee that the Princess Diana Memorial Fountain in London's Hyde Park is sinking and needs rebuilding.
Bob Munroe, a junior contracts manager for Cirencester Civil Engineering, unexpectedly resigned from his position instead of returning to work after Christmas.
Bosses at the firm were shocked to see an article in The Sun newspaper which quoted Mr Munroe, of Cirencester Civil Engineering, saying the attraction, pictured, which receives 800,000 visitors a year, is an engineering disaster'.
"Hundreds of litres are leaking away every day and as a result it's causing subsidence and making the paths rise up and buckle," he said.
"The only way to fix the problem is to pull it all down and start again. Otherwise it will continue to fall apart and more and more money will be spent on it."
Paul Fearns, of Cirencester Civil Engineering said: "He isn't representative of the company at all. He has done it off his own back. We didn't realise we had a problem with Bob until we came back from the Christmas break. We were expecting him back after Christmas but he had written his resignation.
"He was involved while we were there doing maintenance work as a junior contracts manager. He had only been with us for three months."
Last night the Royal Parks agency, which maintains the fountain, denied Mr Munroe's claims.
A spokesman said: "The Diana Princess of Wales Memorial Fountain is not an engineering disaster. It is not sinking, subsiding or leaking hundreds of litres of water a day.
"With any construction in an open landscape there is a small amount of settling. This resulted in some minor leakage in a small area of the fountain.
"Consequently, as part of the fountain's annual maintenance, we replaced an area of grouting and improved the existing drainage."
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