Two councillors brought up problems – Conservative councillor Anne Meadows and Independent councillor Peter Atkinson – at a Brighton and Hove City Council meeting.
Councillor Meadows said that collections had been missed in parts of her ward, Patcham and Hollingbury, for more than a month. She blamed the need for smaller bin lorries in the area’s narrow streets.
Councillor Meadows said: “Rustington Road had no collection for six weeks but that appears to be sorted. However, many more roads are appearing in my inbox of casework.
“This has gone on for some weeks now. Why does it take councillor intervention before anything is done and why does it take so long to get a response even after we’ve asked?”
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s cabinet member for net zero and environmental services, said that using smaller vehicles was not just for narrow streets but also for areas where there were access issues.
He said that the smallest vehicles in the council’s fleet were among the oldest, causing issues with some rounds. The council had now hired two more small vehicles.
In May, the cabinet agreed a number of measures to get the service back on track which Councillor Rowkins said had resulted in “dramatic improvements” in the past few weeks.
In response to Councillor Meadows, Councillor Rowkins said: “When there’s a period of significant disruption, customer services have more emails to respond to and it’s not easy to get back to people.
“Now everything has got back to a much better baseline, we are drilling down into what the persistent issues are in locations where there’s weeks of unreliable service.
Councillor Atkinson, who represents North Portslade, wanted assurances that recycling and garden waste collections would be functioning properly before the council starts introducing food waste collections.
In many areas, the garden waste had not been collected for nine weeks and recycling for six weeks, Councillor Atkinson said.
He was still receiving the same reasons for the problems that he heard when first elected 10 years ago – shortage of staff, sickness, mechanical breakdown and lack of reliable data on collection.
He said: “Do we honestly think it’s realistic or sensible or achievable that we add another collection – food waste – to those already in place.
“This isn’t a criticism of the majority of environmental services staff and managers who only want to provide a decent service for local people.”
Councillor Rowkins said that the food waste service would be rolled out in phases across Brighton and Hove to ensure any lessons were learnt so the service could adapt to challenges as the process moved forward.
Source link
[Featured]
[Just In]
