Councillors call for action over rubbish and recycling collections
Councillors want action to solve long-running problems with rubbish and recycling collections as their email inboxes are full of complaints.
They said that despite a pay rise and talks to solve management issues after a strike last year, parts of Brighton and Hove were still suffering missed rubbish and recycling collections.
Conservative councillor Samer Bagaeen asked for a report on improving the service at Brighton and Hove City Council’s Environment, Transport and Sustainability Committee last night (Tuesday 20 September).
He said that, as part of the settlement with striking bin lorry drivers last year, the council offered a pay rise and scrapped the lowest pay grades at a cost of £859,000 a year.
Councillor Bagaeen, who represents Hove Park ward, said that people in The Paddocks, a cul-de-sac just off The Droveway in his ward, had spent the past six months trying to make it easier for bin crews to reach their rubbish.
He said: “Despite attempts by residents to do everything from making sure the road is clear, trimming all the shrubbery on the side to ensure vehicles have access, to making sure their bins are on the edge of the road, none of those has resulted in their rubbish being collected on the particular day it is supposed to be picked up.”
Councillor Bagaeen said that he had 70 emails in his inbox on this issue alone, which generated 800 grams of carbon.
He called for a report to set out the underlying issues affecting particular areas and to propose a solution.
Labour councillor Gary Wilkinson said that his party had asked for a cross-party working group to investigate and review the “systemic failures” affecting the provision of basic council services.
He said that staff worked hard in challenging conditions and the problem was not with them but the systems and government cuts totalling more than £100 million to the council’s finances.
Councillor Wilkinson said: “Our city’s residents have had to endure overflowing bins with recycling and refuse bins not being emptied for weeks on end.
“These are serious issues that residents expect and deserve solutions to. They are not new concerns.”
Labour councillor Nancy Platts, the former leader of the council, said that she had repeatedly sent the same email about missed collections, including assisted collections, and received a different response every time.
She said: “What this is telling us is the service is so fragile that if we lose a member of staff, it seems to throw out the whole round.
“So the whole of Whitehawk just gets missed and then they have to wait a month to have their recycling collected.
Councillor Nancy Platts
“It’s got to the point that residents are saying to me ‘shall we just give up and put our recycling in the bin’ which will drive down recycling rates.”
Councillor Platts asked officials to tell councillors what was needed to resolve the problems whether it was more staff or a bigger budget.
When councillors debated resolving the strikes in October last year, Councillor Platts spoke with workers on the picket line at Cityclean, the council’s rubbish and recycling service.
She said that they felt that they were “treated like something on the bottom of a manager’s shoe”.
Councillor Platts listed issues ranging from second-hand trucks frequently breaking down, teams sent out in the wrong vehicles and new drivers not given details about rounds with “mazes of alleyways”.
The committee voted by five to four for a detailed report, with Labour and the Conservatives voting in favour and the Greens against.
LIKE WHAT WE DO? HELP US TO DO MORE OF IT BY DONATING HERE.
And don't forget to sign up to our email newsletter, bringing you the week's biggest stories every Thursday.
The only thing that is important for bhcc and the Greens is building more poorly used cycle lanes (even those the number of cyclists is falling). Essential services don’t count
Labour councillor Gary Wilkinson :said that staff worked hard in challenging conditions and the problem was not with them but the systems and government cuts totalling more than £100 million to the council’s finances.
What the good councillor doesn’t tell us, is what the council receives in other benefits that it didn’t have before. BHCC’s own website tells us and quoted The expected business rate retention income forecasts were set out in the report to the January 2022 Policy & Resources Committee. The council is forecast
to receive £71.432m from its locally retained share of business rates.
So it’s not a 100m is it, it’s 29m, but then there’s other grants and benefits that outweigh any cuts. The actual deficit was 23% yet gains worked out at 27% so overall a 4% increase.
The cuts argument is just a diversion. B&HC isn’t the only council to have funding reductions. It has happened across the country. Yet other councils still manage to collect the rubbish. Still recycle a higher proportion of waste. Remove graffiti, and clear weeds. The list goes on and on
Cityclean has its own issues. It has done for decades. That it doesn’t have a working IT system is farcical. It also has serious worker/management issues. It is inefficient and poorly run. Outsourcing was attempted years ago. Didn’t work. Back in house for over a decade and that too hasn’t worked.
A report is needed and options for major change. The greens were wrong to vote against that need. I doubt that council officers will have the vision for what is needed. Many of them are part of the problem it seems. So without a budget for outside consultants, not sure anything will change…. We deserve much better!
Helen dont forget the 10 million pound loan to another council.
225 days before we stand a chance of getting rid of this useless council
Labour always blame Tory cuts; but what they always fail to mention – is those cuts; the so-called ‘Tory austerity’ is a direct result of Gordon Brown bailing out the banks to the tune of billions. Those banks are still part-nationalised – and we; the tax-paying public are paying those bankers’ bonuses. Those bonuses are due to increase; thanks to the current PM.
With the current administration in this so-called city (really just two towns, next to each other) it’s always someone elses fault; never theirs.
It was widely reported a few years’ ago; that the council had recruited a new director, a woman, on a huge salary, with a nice gold-plated final-salary pension no doubt; to ‘sort out’ Cityclean…
Where is she, who is she, and what’s she been doing these last few years????
Nothing, it would seem.
And yet this so-called city is steadily turning into a rubbish tip, whilst the council wastes our time and money on woke nonsense, vanity projects and cycle lanes that no-one uses.
DO THE JOB WE PAY YOU TO DO!!!!!
No surprises – the Greens voting against scrutiny…