The motion was tabled at 7:18 PM on Thursday in the council chamber, beneath the freshly serviced clock that Mr Quirke had restarted in March and which has since kept time to within four seconds a week. Councilwoman Annette Pryce read the operative text aloud — six paragraphs, drafted in the unhurried style of someone who has been waiting for this moment for the better part of a year — and then sat down without further comment. She had given her speech eleven days earlier, on the day the audit report was presented, and she did not feel the need to give it again.

The debate took ninety-two minutes. Twenty-one members spoke. Seven amendments were considered, three were accepted, and one was withdrawn after Alderman Voss observed that it would have exempted from inspection any building owned by a partnership of more than four persons, which is to say most of the Docklands.

The vote came at 9:14 PM. Fourteen in favour. Three against. One abstention.

The three opposing votes came from Councillors Wreford, Lammers, and Crayle himself, who had returned to the chamber for the first time since Monday morning and who spoke briefly and without theatre. “I have been on the wrong side of the law’s interpretation this week,” he said. “I am not on the wrong side of building safety. I am on the side of proportion. I do not believe that proportion is best served by inspecting every shed in the Docklands every twelve months. I will be voting against.”

Councilwoman Pryce, who had not looked at him during his remarks, looked at him then. She did not speak.

The abstention came from Alderman Hesketh, who is recovering from a chest cold and who explained, in a written note read into the record by the Clerk, that he had not been present for the audit hearings and did not feel qualified to vote on a motion arising from them. The note was twelve lines long. It included an apology for the absence and a suggestion, in the final paragraph, that the inspection regime ought to be reviewed after two years to determine whether the burden it imposed on small operators was proportionate to the risk it addressed. The Clerk read the suggestion aloud. Pryce nodded once.

The regime takes effect on 1 June. From that date, every commercial property in the Docklands ward — approximately 340 buildings, by the Borough Surveyor’s count — must be inspected annually by a qualified structural engineer or chartered building surveyor, with reports filed with the Revenue Office and the Borough Surveyor. The cost of inspection is borne by the owner. The motion specifies a maximum fee of 180 florins per inspection, set by reference to the Hallam & Stroud schedule of professional rates and reviewed annually by the Works Committee.

Properties that fail inspection are subject to a stop-notice procedure operated by the Borough Surveyor. Properties that pass receive a small enamelled disc, mounted by the door, dated and numbered. Pryce’s amendment to include the disc was accepted unanimously. “It is a small thing,” she said, when asked afterwards by this newspaper why it had mattered to her. “But it is a thing the public can see. It tells you that someone has looked.”

The motion’s passage closes a chapter that opened on the morning of 11 February, when the wall of the Harbourfront Parade warehouse began visibly to lean and the Borough Surveyor ordered an immediate evacuation. It survived the audit, the magistrate’s hearing, the magistrate’s judgment, and three weeks of intermittent procedural argument in the council chamber. It will outlive most of the people who voted on it.

It will not, however, be Edmond Crayle’s last word on building safety in the Docklands. He confirmed in a written statement issued on Friday afternoon that Ashcroft Property Group will pay the 2.41-million-florin demand in full, in two instalments, the first by 15 May and the second by 30 June. The statement contained no reference to “further consideration.” The phrase, which had hung in the air outside the tribunal on Monday like the threat of rain, had passed.

“The magistrate has spoken,” Crayle wrote, in a sentence that surprised those who have known him longest. “I do not propose to test the patience of either the tribunal or the city by appealing a judgment that was, as the magistrate’s reasoning makes plain, correct on the law as it stands. If the law is to change, it should change in this chamber, not in another magistrate’s office.”

It was an unusually direct concession from a man whose reputation has been built upon the careful avoidance of direct concessions.

Pryce, asked for her response to the statement, said only: “Good.” She was halfway out of the chamber when she said it, and she did not stop walking.

The first of June is thirty-six days away. The Borough Surveyor’s office has been instructed to begin compiling the inspection roll on Monday. Hallam & Stroud, who undertook the audit and the shoring and the architect’s letter analysis and the warehouse stabilisation, have indicated that they will assign three engineers to the initial survey work and will not be the only firm bidding for the contracts. Draper, the engineer who shored Harbourfront Parade in three days with fourteen steel props, was seen on Friday morning at the Borough Surveyor’s counter, picking up a copy of the inspection schedule.

He said he wanted to be ready.