The riverside park and shopping centre in Salisbury where the former Russian spy Sergei Skripal and his daughter Yulia collapsed after a nerve agent attack has been declared safe and is expected to reopen this weekend.
Council leaders in Salisbury said The Maltings site, which has been closed for more than 11 weeks, was clean and the reopening would be an important milestone for the city.
Teams of council staff set to work with vigour, tidying and cleaning the Maltings park and shops. Grass was cut, vegetation slashed back and shop windows cleaned.
Shop workers began returning to prepare and re-stock stores ready for the reopening. Some whooped and clapped as they were allowed to pass through the security cordon.
Sharon Batstone, who works at B&R Textiles, one of the shops closest to the bench where Skripal and his daughter were discovered unconscious, said: “It’s really exciting. Some of the workers in these shops have been frightened for their jobs. When you don’t know what’s happening it’s really worrying. It’s great for the whole of Salisbury that The Maltings is reopening.”
The bench on which the Skripals were sitting before falling ill will not be replaced and ultimately some sort of memorial or public art work could be installed there. The council accepted that visitors were bound to take selfies at the spot but said it could think of no way of preventing this.
Speaking at the park on the banks of the River Avon, Alistair Cunningham, the chair of the recovery coordination group, announced that the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) had handed the site back to the city after a painstaking process of testing, cleaning and re-testing to make sure there was no trace of the nerve agent novichok.
He said: “We’re pleased to say the site is clean and remediation work is under way to bring it back into use.”
The council added that grass would be cut, brickwork repaired and paintwork touched up, with the aim opening the site to the public by the bank holiday weekend.
At the end of last week, it emerged that Sergei Skripal had been released from hospital. His daughter was discharged last month and a police officer, DS Nick Bailey, left hospital just over two weeks after the 4 March attack.
Cunningham said the park’s opening was hugely important for the Salisbury’s recovery: “This is a city that is turning its back on the incident and looking forward. It is a real milestone in Salisbury returning to normal. It’s a great day. You walk around and life goes on, the city is bigger than the incident.”
Cunningham insisted the site was completely safe, adding: “Testing, cleaning and re-cleaning has been carried out to make sure there is no chance of any materials being left at the site of a hazardous nature. There is no risk to public health: it is a simple message.”
Decontamination work is continuing at other sites, including the Zizzi restaurant and the Mill pub, which the Skripals visited on the day they fell ill. Detectives are also carrying out investigative work at Sergei Skripal’s house.
Wiltshire council is working on finding out how much the incident has cost the city. It said footfall has fallen 10% and “one or two” businesses in the Maltings had closed.
The council considered installing a new bench with a collection pot for people to donate to charity but decided against the idea. Cunningham said it would be silly to try to stop people taking selfies on the spot.
Defra confirmed that decontamination work was complete at the Maltings. A spokesperson said: “The site was visited by specialist teams and any items that may have harboured residual amounts of the agent were removed. All waste has been removed and will be disposed of safely.”
