"The introduction of a third bin for residual waste should further improve the situation."

This is an email that I have sent to Councillor Gary Parker.

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Hi,

Well the new black bins have, as you promised, been delivered to Floyd Road and after a couple of collections it seems like a good time to assess your statement that "the introduction of a third bin for residual waste should further improve the situation."

Has it worked?

Well no, I don't believe that any honest man could claim that it has.

Residents without black bins are continuing to put out black sacks in the wrong week, now perhaps you might say that the black bin deliveries are not yet complete and that they too will soon have a black bin.

However even residents that do have black bins are continuing to fill their other bins with the wrong waste, which the Council defines as "contaminated", which results in the bins not being collected.

So can we agree that the black bins have certainly not resolved the situation?

So what are you going to do now?

The Council has tried a number of tactics over the last year to implement the new bin scheme. At first you ignored rubbish in the street and overspilling contaminated bins. Then additional collections were introduced every week both to take away black sacks and to empty contaminated bins. Finally black bins were introduced. None of these ideas have worked.

I fear that the Council will return to the "ignore" mode of last spring and once again rubbish will accumulate.

However I also do not support the continued extra collections, on both a budgetary and an environmental front they do not make any sense. They also act as sticking plasters covering up the problem and in fact encouraging residents to ignore the new scheme as it's been proven that their bins will be emptied and black sacks taken regardless of when and where they are put out.

I've said from the very early days of the new scheme, when it's failures were all too readily apparent, that the only real solution is for the Council to come out and talk to those residents who are having issues. Unlike many people I know I do believe that the Council did do what could reasonably be expected to publicise the new scheme before it began. The Council have also been persistent in singing the praises and claiming the successes of the new scheme to us residents in publications such as Greenwich Time.

However those things are all one way communications, Greenwich Council has shown itself to be very good at talking at residents and telling us that everything is fine.

Now surely you have to actually talk with residents to resolve the problems and establish a real two way conversation with us.

Perhaps you could even give some of your time to walk around the streets and talk to those people who are having difficulties complying with the new scheme. Surely that would be a move environmentally and economically viable solution than spending our money on extra black bins and extra rubbish collections?

I enclose some photos illustrating the continued problems that are occurring.

Thank you for your time and I look forward to hearing your response.

Regards,

CA

How many bins do residents now need to have? Is any thought given during their distribution?

This was taken last week. Residents without black bins are continuing to put black sacks out in the wrong weeks and those sacks are being torn open by animals spreading the waste around.

Even residents with black bins are continuing to fill their other bins with the "wrong" waste. These problems are not caused by people having no where to put their black sacks.

Chocolate Teapot Clipper Campaign?

There's rather an interesting story on the News Shopper web site.

Greenwich Council are calling on the Mayor to get Oyster Cards accepted on the Clipper commuter riverboats, a better level subsidy and an increased timetable..

However Boris Johnson has said that neither he nor TFL have heard anything about this.

Loathe as I am to quote the local Tories, who are in my opinion as much to blame for the shocking state of politics in Greenwich as the Labour party are, Councillor Spencer Drury seems to sum it up when he says "I am curious what sort of campaign fails to contact the person or organisation which it is seeking to influence. The council is complaining because Boris hasn’t done something that it never asked him to do - this campaign is simply deceitful."

Could it be that Greenwich Council are making a noise about doing something when actually they're doing nothing? That's not like them now is it?

Or is there some decent explanation behind this? Are the Council trying to gather support first before contacting Boris?

I'm not totally convinced that there is a genuine problem here and not just some Tory trying to cover up their own "do nothing" attitude by accusing the Council of the same.

However it is very hard indeed to think of a reason why a campaign wouldn't at least touch base with the people who make the relevant decisions to at least see if something is on the cards.

So the Council's Clipper Campaign might be the 2nd nomination for the Chocolate Teapot 2009.

Should your road be gritted?

As I've said already today Floyd Road has not been gritted, and it's not alone. I've seen a number of other roads that haven't had any attention and I'm not the only local blogger to notice this.

However should we expect all of our roads to be gritted?

As it turns out the Council do provide some information about this. In particular they have a Winter Service Policy that goes into a reasonable level of detail about what they aim to do.

From that I've learned that all streets are broken down into three priorities:

Priority 1

• main distributor roads
• secondary distributor roads
• main bus routes
• transport interchanges
• roads leading to hospitals, ambulances and fire stations

Priority 2

• routes linking main and secondary distributor roads
• routes through industrial estates and housing hubs

Priority 3

• all remaining residential roads

Pavements are broken down into similar groups:

Priority 1

• main shopping areas such as Eltham, Woolwich and Greenwich Town Centres
• transport interchanges i.e. around rail stations

Priority 2

• local shopping areas
• footbridges
• routes through housing estates
• hills
• around schools

Priority 3

• all remaining footways

Floyd Road is, perhaps somewhat surprisingly, a Priority 2 road and the pavement around the station should be a Priority 1 area.

Neither have been gritted.

So three full days after the snow begins to fall Greenwich Council have failed to grit their Priority 2 roads and their Priority 1 pavements.

Is that reasonable?

I am quite genuinely not sure. On the one hand this has been truly exceptional weather and buses along main roads now seem to be fine. On the other we have had three days and what sort of priority is "priority 2" if it's not done after all that time?

And all of this must come with a warning that in order for gritting to be effective you need a certain level of movement over it. So perhaps my street has actually been gritted but hasn't seen enough vehicles to get it to work.

Anyway check your street out and let's see if we can gain some measure as to how the Council is doing when measured against it's own priorities.

I'm very tempted to go out and buy a shovel, if I already had one I'd have been out there by now trying to make a bit of a difference around me.

Final photos of the snow...

...or are they? More might be on the way later in the week.

Anyway because I really enjoyed having the snow here are a final few photos.

"We want information" and "improvements"?

Train & Buses
Southeastern's Web site appears to be under a bit of stress right now and seems to be serving up a minimal simple page. They do claim to be running a normal service. The station this morning however saw rather large queues and about a half hour delay on some services into London.

The buses should be running, the TFL web site appears to be made of sterner stuff than Southeastern's, or perhaps it's not getting hit as much, and is giving out all sorts of information. Some routes are being diverted, the 486 is apparently going via Westcombe Hill thus avoiding Charlton Church Lane. A friend waited 30 minutes for it this morning. Charlton Church Lane does seem gritted and pretty clear, but there is a massive queue of traffic on it running from the lights right up past Conran's.


Council Services
Lewisham's Web Site is being quite helpful with some nice links on the front page.

Bromley's Web Site is doing similar things, right at the top a nice green link to an information page.

Bexley's Web Site puts a link to information right at the top of their home page too.

Greenwich's Web Site leads with a story about the Royal Arsenal Co-Operative Society. Maybe they've got some information further down, um, no, not that I can see. Nothing about schools, nothing about roads and nothing about waste collection. Even searching about through the site I can't find any information.

Could the Council be failing to communicate to it's residents? Surely not!

Edited to add: At some point over the morning Greenwich have got a page up with a small amount of information on it, it's here. Basically if your rubbish isn't taken this week then it will be taken next week and they're only aware of one school, Woolwich Polytechnic, being partially closed. Oh and they did manage to deliver Greenwich Time to me today reminding me that all is well and wonderful here in Greenwich!

Floyd Road itself doesn't appear to have been gritted, though for grit to work it does also need a certain level of traffic so maybe it has and it's just not worked properly because of that. It still looks rather nasty, cars are getting up and down though as I walked up it this morning I saw a lorry get stuck on the corner half way up. This road isn't a major one or even a through route so it's got to be a very low priority so I'm not sure if we should expect it to be gritted or not, I think I'll bet on the "not" as there's so many other more high priority roads around.

Edited to add:I'm not the only local blogger to notice that only main roads appear to be being gritted. Still the question stands, should we expect them to be?

I did see a bin lorry in Floyd Road this morning, which in all honesty did really impress me. It was emptying the blue wheely bin at the top of the road, none of the other waste has been collected, so their heroic efforts appear to not be aimed at us residents.

I can understand completely why we've not had collections, but I would like to know what's going to happen.

Anyhow a few more photos....A rather ropey looking Floyd Road, cars are getting up and down it though, I'm not sure that I want to try.

The blue bin that a rubbish lorry has been able to empty, and behind it a green bin overspilling with plastic bags. So was Councillor Gary Parker right when he said that the new black bins would improve the situation? Or did I have it closer when I suggested that "we'll continue to see black sacks on the street" and "over spilling wrongly filled bins"?

Further signs of improvements.

How many bins? Well I presume it's better than actually talking to people to try and sort things out.

Nice...

So are all the black bins for Floyd road delivered? Do all the houses that need them have them? Well the answer to the latter question is obviously no.

After the snow

So how are things now that the snow has stopped falling.

Well my road hasn't been gritted, but I wasn't thinking that that was really much of an issue. When we had the big snows back in 2003 I lived elsewhere and my road wasn't gritted then so I'm not sure if we should be expecting it now.

However I read a story on the News Shopper web site that made me think about how well Greenwich was prepared and how well it's dealt with things.

Basically our neighbouring boroughs of Bexley and Lewisham claim to have most of their schools open. Greenwich on the other hand has most of it's schools closed.

So why's that then?

Was the snow in Greenwich somehow heavier than on Bexley and Lewisham?

Or could it be that the Council simply wasn't prepared and couldn't organise it's gritters properly so as to enable the schools to open.

Before reading that story I really wasn't that cynical about Greenwich's handling with what's going on. My view was that this sort of event is rare enough as to make more extensive preparations a bit of a waste of money.

However when Council's around us can open their schools and we can't aren't there some questions to be asked? Even if it's the case that Lewisham and Bexley did something special and out of the ordinary as opposed to Greenwich Council being their usual shambles isn't there something to be learned?

Snow!

The morning commute today was a fail, the trains and buses are all suspended. So I went for a stroll instead and it was really rather lovely. There was a moment up in the park when the sun was coming up and everything turned this amazing shade of pink :)