This came about because the Council sent some people around to chat to the residents about the new scheme and our feelings on it. I spent about 10 minutes talking to a very nice and seemingly interested lady from Waste Services.
She said the Council were serious about tackling the problem and they knew who some of the more problematic residents were. In particular she spoke to the people who keep doing things like this (their bins are on the left) and this (again their bins are on the left and they were responsible for at least for of the rubbish in the pile on the right, there was a parcel addressed to them amongst it). I suggest that they have a word with people like that a while ago, perhaps they were having some problems or were new residents baffled by the new collection scheme. Well either way it was seemingly finally being done.
So anyway I felt confident that things were finally being done. Perhaps the Council really were going to get this street looking like it did before the new bin scheme came in. I admit that even that wasn't great but it was better than the "the bin men are on strike" look that they seemingly are trying to cultivate now.
However towards the tail end of last week my optimism began to wane, today it's broken completely.
The least of the problems is that yet again numerous people around here have put black sacks out on the wrong week. So they sit there being animal and lout fodder for the next week.
However what's now up at the top of Floyd Road really takes the biscuit. There's an overflowing bin, a huge pile of black sacks and other rubbish next to it and sitting near the top is a large blue wheely bin thing that's also overfilling.
So this is a "priority street"? May your deity of choice help the rest of you.
So let's recap the things that I've heard from various representatives of the Council nearly 5 months into the new scheme and 3 months since I began to try and get them to clean the street up.
Councillor Janet Gillman: One fifty word letter back, a quick response but aside from saying the immediate mess at the time would be cleared up no comment about any long term solution. I've heard nothing from her since.
Councillor Allan MacCarthy: Took three weeks to respond due to a claim of illness. His letter dropped Councillor Gillman into it by saying she was dealing with it and would keep me up to date, not a word since. So did Councillor Gillman slack off in keeping me up to date or is Councillor MacCarthy a liar and she said she would do no such thing?
Councillor Gary Parker: I've had quite a bit of contact with this Councillor, he puts the others to shame on that front. However in terms of actual results he's not faired much better. Over a month ago he told me he was "monitoring the situation" in Floyd Road. Well either he's given up on that or he's seen that state of it and is happy with it, neither are particularly nice options. When there have been particularly bad problems he has been able to get them cleaned up and I believe it was him that prodded Jim Wintour into action, see below, and seems to also have been connected in the Waste Services staff coming around last week. However the problems haven't stopped, so after so many months what I am to think?
Jim Wintour, Director of Neighbourhood Services: Took three weeks to respond. He did get the immediate mess cleared up when he said he would, however he's seemingly done nothing to stop it coming back. Back at the tail end of April he did claim that letters were being sent to those residents who were having trouble following the new scheme. Were they? If so was he happy that the letters were just ignored?
So we've got one Councillor who did nothing, another Councillor who pointed the finger at another Councillor and then ran away, as final Councillor who seems able to tackle the symptoms when chased but is incapable of making a dent on the cause and a director of the department responsible who gave one long reply, did a single clean up within the timeframe he said that he would but then vanished into silent oblivion.
Great.
Let me remind those people that I for one regret with a great passion voting for what my dictionary says ward stands for.
Ward: Under care of a guardian, guardianship.
Charlton is under your care, you are it's guardian. That's not because it was forced upon you but because you choose to stand up before us residents and say that you could be trusted with it.
Look back through my old posts about this.
Look at the photos that close this entry.
Remember this has been going on for nearly half a year.
Can anyone say that they're doing a good job?
As before this will be reported and I'm sure that it will be cleaned up, but I'm equally sure that not one of the people listed above will do anything of substance and determination to stop it from happening again.
I'm not alone in this, another local blogger has reported a very similar problem with a very familiar lack or response from the Council.
1 comment:
The concept of priority streets sounds rather dodgy asit implies that elsewhere there are non-priority streets.
At its Cabinet meeting this evening Greenwich Council was due to consider the following recommendations from officers:
1) To authorise the expenditure of up to £1.29 million to buy 60,000 wheeled bins for the storage of residual waste. "This would enable the Council to meet residents concerns while maintaining a fortnightly collection ofresidual waste"
2) Not to increase the frequency of residual collection as "this would commit the Council to significant, indefinite, additional ongoing revenue expenditure on staff and vehicles for extra collections and would not meet many residents concerns about the containment of waste"
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