The council has bought four more new bin lorries as an investigation starts into suspected sabotage at the Cityclean rubbish and recycling depot in Hollingdean.
A senior councillor announced the purchase of the lorries, which will be used to empty communal bins, as council leader Bella Sankey spoke out about the sabotage.
Brighton and Hove City Council issued a statement saying: “CCTV cameras at the council’s Hollingdean depot are being analysed after the wires on two lorries were purposely cut to ensure the vehicles couldn’t operate and therefore couldn’t go out on collection rounds.”
Councillor Sankey said: “The cutting of lorry wires is unlawful and scandalous and is extremely dangerous to our staff. It’s also criminal activity which has been reported and is being investigated by Sussex Police.”
She said that a small minority were disrupting the rubbish and recycling service and added: “We will not be held to ransom by these people.”
Labour councillor Tim Rowkins said: “First, I want to acknowledge the significant drop in the reliability of our refuse and recycling collections in recent weeks.
“After a few months of much-improved service to our residents, it’s obviously very disappointing to see it disrupted in this way.”
Councillor Rowkins said that communal bin collections were missed on several occasions over the past few weeks.
He said: “I was personally out with one of the rounds last week, helping to clear the backlog in the city centre.
“Our communal vehicles are some of the oldest in the fleet and I’m pleased to say that we will be taking delivery of four new communal vehicles over the next few weeks.
“As well as being zero-emission EVs (electric vehicles), these new vehicles will bring significant reliability improvements to the service.
“The existing vehicles will be kept on standby for an extended period of time in order to ensure that we have a safety net in case of any teething difficulties with the new ones.
“Lasting improvements to this service remain a central focus of this administration and we will continue to give it the attention that it deserves.”
Councillor Rowkins was speaking at a meeting of the council’s City Environment, South Downs and the Sea Committee at Hove Town Hall this afternoon (Tuesday 12 March).
He chairs the committee which received a report about the items that the government expects councils to collect for recycling by the end of March 2026.
The council already collects a number of the materials such as glass jars and bottles and steel and aluminium tins and cans.
But it will also be expected to collect cartons, pots, tubs and trays, aluminium foil and trays and plastic film packaging. More details about how the change are managed will be given in future reports.
These doing the alleged sabotage on rubbish track collection aren’t doing this against the council but against every single citizen of this city. They must face the criminal justice system for damage to public services, if found guilty.
Sabotage is a Police matter. Where is the CCTV footage? Arrests please. Previously we were told it took 18 months plus to procure an EV bin lorry from the time of committee approval. How come BHCC can now get hold of EV bin lorries within weeks now? And will they now be able to collect from parks, unmade roads and golf courses?The previous EV bin lorry experiment was a failure and Hollingdean depot still lacks a charging station infrastructure to service them, which will cost many hundreds of thousands to install.
WAITING FOR THE ENDANGERED 50 BUS AT ROEDALE RD THIS MORNING THE DUSTCART BLOCKED THE BUS FOR 20 MINUTES , MAKING IT LATER THAN IT USUALLY IS , INSTEAD OF JUST SITTING THERE HE COULD HAVE MOVED TO LET THE BUS BY THEN I GOT A LOAD OF VERBAL FROM THE BINMAN ON THE GROUND I DON’T WORK MYSELF , BUT IF I DID I WOULD RESENT MY TAXES PAYING THESE MORONS THANK YOU
SORRY YOU WERE INCONVIENCED FROM YOUR NONESSENTIAL TRAVEL FOR 20 MINUTES.
Has anyone contacted the GMB for comment ?
GMB Mafia at it again?
The GMB doesn’t comment though, does it, which speaks volumes for how they operate. All we get are apparent threats from Turner (and presumably he still has cronies at the depot) and semi-threatening parrot-speak from this new person, Lib. But no comments – not even denials – just threats, whether veiled or explicit., and no cogent explanation of what the latest gripe is, even if they know.
I think I read somewhere that the council was hiring some new drivers. There seems to be little point because, although we are told it is a small minority causing the issues, we still have something like 90% or more of the GMB workforce going along with this latest strike idea, most of whom, according to the council, are doing a good job, so something’s very wrong somewhere. Someone has already said that, as soon as a new employee arrives at the depot, they are approached and ‘inducted’ into the GMB, so the thing self-perpetutates.
You couldn’t make this rubbish up the council is run by people who have not got a clue they make it up as they go along
Nice new trucks for the idiots to vandalise
Possible news flash, folks, Ms Sankey doesn’t now have membership of the GMB in her register of interests on the council website and nor does Cllr Rowkins. It would be good to know whether or not Ms Sankey is actually in the GMB or not, because it does have a massive bearing on all this. Perhaps she and Mr Rowkins might like to confirm one way or the other., although I have no reason to suspect the latter ever was a member, but Ms Sankey was and ‘proud of it’.
Having said all that, I don’t actually care about the political hue of the people dealing with this and I don’t think most of us do. It isn’t about politics, but logistics. Surely, the very vast majority of people in this city have a mutual interest in getting this situation sorted as soon as possible (like very quickly), regardless of whether the council is red, green or purple with yellow spots on.
Politics should not be considered in such a public service such as bin emptying. If the job is not efficiently carried out regularly then we all suffer, e.g., proliferation of gulls and rats taking advantage of muck laying around, scattering it and making matters worse. Just deal with it and leave politics for the voting. Waste clearance needs regular attention to prevent the spread of disease. Council political leadership is irrelevant in this matter.