Wednesday, May 21, 2008

And the rubbish came back...

It's been another very busy couple of weeks with me spending less and less time in Charlton, which may have been good for the Council.

I was hoping to find the time to highlight, once again, the mess at the top of Floyd Road. Well by the time I find some time to post about it some of it has actually been tidied up. There was a big blue wheely bin thing full of waste, some of which appeared to be commercial (fruit crates?). Well something happened and the blue bin has now gone. Which is good. So a big pat on the back to whoever made that happen.

However whoever shifted the blue bin ignored the state of the once again overspilling green bins next to them.

Yet another week and yet another wrong load of rubbish stuffed into the wrong bins and left behind by the bin men (understandably so).

This is what I'm faced with going up and down the road...



It's outside the same house as before so I'm guessing it's the same residents that keep on doing this.

When I wrote to my local Councillors and Jim Wintour, the Director of Neighbourhood Services, over 2 months ago I ended the letter by saying:

I write to you in the hope that you can take charge of the situation and get the streets around here cleaned up.

Furthermore I can only dream that you will make sure that measures are put in place to stop it happening week after week after week.

This is your ward, you are meant to be the ones who care for it, please prove to me that you do.


In my emails to Councillor Parker, the only one of my Councillors to give me any kind of a substantial response or dialogue, I've explicitly asked him "What has, or is, being done about enforcement of collection issues?". I've never had an answer.

The same people seem to keep doing the same thing week after week after week. I know who they are, the Council surely must know who they are. Why aren't they helping/sorting them out?

Now if I knew them I'd have a word, I've spoken to my immediate neighbours about some problems that we had with the new scheme and got them all sorted out. But I don't know those people and I don't see why I should have to walk up to strangers and ask them what their trouble with the Council's cunning plan is.

So I write here.

And I phone Cleansweep (it will be cleaned in 2-5 days, apparently).

And I email my Councillors.

And occasionally something gets done and the street is clean for a few days.

And that seems to be the way that things are going to stay.

Am I alone in thinking that that's really not good enough?

Oh, and there was another failed nappy collection...

1 comment:

Unknown said...

There are things that the Council could famously fail to organise in a place which brews alcoholic beverages.

Their general level of awareness/organisation: a few weeks ago I made an order on the website for some cornstarch bags for my kitchen caddy and a lockable black bin. Some days later I was delivered a notice about nappy collections and 100 nappy sacks. See they'll collect my nappies even though I don't have a baby!

When I phoned them up they insisted that I wanted a nappy collection. Then they realised that the items I'd requested needed to be paid for... and their payment system was down. Someone will ring you back in five minutes I was told. I've not heard from them again.

This is nothing compared to the state of Floyd Road (which I see regularly from the bus). Absolute disgrace.