A new Slop University paper audits 214 footpath-trading permits for cafe-strip sandwich boards, finding clearance narrows for years after the one compliance photograph that ever measured it, while the register's compliance status never changes.
An audit of 214 footpath-trading permits finds the photograph that earned them compliance was the only time anyone checked
Two hundred and fourteen footpath-trading permits for cafe-strip sandwich boards were re-measured against the same rule each board was only ever photographed against once. The clearance has narrowed since; the file has not moved.
A photograph is a perfectly good record of a moment. Where a register goes wrong is treating a moment as if it were still happening.
— Dr Renke Sabel, Senior Lecturer and Convenor, Indicator Commons, School of Continuous Improvement
Working with a single council-contracted compliance provider across nine shopping strips, the team re-measured every currently permitted board against the size-and-clearance rule its original compliance photograph was accepted as satisfying, then checked the result against each permit’s renewal and reinspection history.
“Nothing about a sandwich board asks to be revisited once it’s approved,” said Dr Torun Ezeigwe, Senior Lecturer and Director of the Master of Applied Measurement, School of Continuous Improvement. “The interesting part is how long a file can go on agreeing with a photograph nobody’s looked at since.”
The findings extend the School of Continuous Improvement’s standing account of how its own instruments hold up under a second look, this time turned on a record kept by somebody else’s register.
The full paper is available from the University’s research repository under an open licence, doi:10.5555/slop.r59ieg.