On Thursday this week there was some good news, the lift at Wimbledon Odeon is now working.

This follows an eight week long campaign to get Odeon to take action, as both their lift and escalators have been out of action since at least November 2022.

After residents raised this with him in February, Cllr Anthony Fairclough attempted to contact Odeon to find out what was going on.

After being ignored by them for weeks, he wrote to them, highlighting their legal obligations and asking how these were being met.

He also encouraged a number of local residents to contact Odeon directly on this issue too.

In response they sent a few holding replies, and there was evidence that all of a sudden they had engineers on site. Indeed the lift even worked for a few hours.

On 17 March 2023, Cllr Fairclough eventually receive a holding reply from the cinema manager, stating that Odeon take “good customer service extremely seriously” but providing absolutely no information on the timescales for the work. The only explanation offered was that “specific parts required to fix the lift and escalators have not been available”.

Pointing out that this reply did not address the issue raised, Cllr Fairclough asked that his correspondence be treated as an official complaint under Odeon policy. To date he has not received confirmation that they are doing so.

Nonetheless earlier this week he was told the lift would be working this week, and the escalators “as soon as possible”.

When he checked on Thursday afternoon the lift was still being worked upon, but by Thursday evening…

April Update: We’ve asked Odeon to update their signage and message on the website now the lift is working. They have confirmed they’ve passed this on to the local team to action.

Update 20-21 May: The lift broke again on Friday 19 May. We have received the below update on its repair, ultimate replacement and the timing of a repair on the escalators.