Ealing Council: the official line on street cleaning.
The below message was posted on the Ealing Forum. It's the Interim Director of Envoronment's reply to a complaint from a Northfields resident. In sum, it says they don't really know what they're doing, so they're making it up as they go along and they might, with residents' help, have worked it out by this time next year!I hope Mr Henaghan has a tin hat.Dear xxxxThankyou for your message about street cleaning in Northfields ward.As you mention in June we changed the refuse collection service. We know that before the change to the new refuse system, in many residential streets the main source of litter was from a combination of ripped bags and open boxes from our refuse and recycling service. Having a wheeled bin with a lid to stop wind-blown litter and loose waste has clear benefits. Our work over the coming months is to find out how we can capture this benefit.This means that the way we sweep roads and the frequency will change until we find the optimum resource.At the moment we know we have probably been sweeping some roads too often and some too little. In other words although we have used a huge body of evidence to design the current service we are learning as we go. We also know that some residents are struggling with the new refuse system and in some instances our contractor is not performing as well as we would like, both of these also create concerns. Going into the summer we should require reduced resource as residents are away and foot fall reduces, in the late summer we will then increase numbers to cope firstly with the good weather at the beginning of September when most people are back off holiday, and then leaf fall. We won’t know exactly what service will be right until probably this time next year. Our performance standard for flytip removal is 24hours from receipt of report. When the flytips are removed we search through the material to find evidence of where it is coming from. Where we have clear evidence we take enforcement action and offer clear advice to prevent it happening again. I hope that along with the frequently asked questions sheet Cllr Mahfouz referred to answers your questions. We know we need to do more to get the service completely right and your feedback about areas where we need to improve is really useful. We will then change the service to deal with the problems. I regularly do a walk about in the ward and if you would like to join/direct me that would also be really useful. Kind regardsDarren HenaghanInterim Director of EnvironmentEaling CouncilPerceval House14/16 Uxbridge RoadEalingLondon W5 2HL0208 825 8576HenaghanD@ealing.gov.uk
Peter Millman ● 3673d0 Comments