On Tuesday March 21st, your correspondent had a special appointment to keep up at the Mansion House in Clifton, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Bristol.
The occasion was the presentation of Lord Mayor’s Medals to what Jeff Lovell, the current Lord Mayor, described in his opening remarks as “community champions”.
Only some 20 medals are awarded each year and your ‘umble scribe was a recipient this year.
Receiving the medal from the Lord Mayor. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street
According to the citation, I was commended for my work in the voluntary and community sector in East Bristol, including all the Tidy BS5 efforts to make Easton and Lawrence Hill a cleaner, more pleasant environment.
However, I was not the only recipient with a BS5 postcode. Three other locals received recognition.
Hannah Crudgington was recognised for her work for Tidy BS5 (particularly her videos. Ed.) and her efforts to show a more positive side to Easton than is generally given by the local media.
Bruce Yates was commended for his work in turning around local youth organisation Baggator at The Pickle Factory in All Hallows Road, as well as his work for RADE Bristol, which campaigns for inner-city clean air and against efforts to install polluting standby electricity generating plant in the city.
Last but not least, Amy Harrison received a medal for her work for Up Our Street.
All four of us are shown in the photograph below.
The BS5 recipients of the Lord Mayor’s Medal. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street.
It was, all told, a lovely afternoon, which was made even more special by a surprise visit by my eldest niece Katherine and boyfriend Martyn, who were subsequently treated to a night on the tiles in Easton.
Last weekend was the highlight of the Great British Spring Clean campaign when Brits were exhorted to go out and do their bit to tidy up the UK.
Bristol did its part, needless to say with the campaign dovetailing neatly into Mayor Marvin Rees’ Bristol Clean Streets campaign, for which he’s has made a pledge that Bristol will be measurably cleaner by 2020.
Marvin launched the Great British Spring Clean weekend in Bristol by returning to his old school in Easton.
Marvin Rees on Stapleton Road with children from Hannah More Primary School, plus Tracey Morgan, CEO of Bristol Waste and Kurt James, Bristol Clean Streets lead officer. Picture credit: Bristol City Council.
Litter picks were organised all over the city in both (so-called) deprived areas and prosperous communities alike, from Lockleaze to leafy and well-to-do Stockwood. It seems that litter is a problem with no class distinctions.
Needless to say the Tidy BS5 volunteers were out as well, getting their hands dirty. Two were spotted doing their own impromptu litter pick in Easton’s All Hallows Road, whilst there was a more premeditated litter pick of Owen Square Park organised by Up Our Street as part of the Love Your Community day at next-door Easton Community Centre.
In addition, Tidy BS5 also organised a stall on Lawrence Hill, near the entrance to Lidl. Leaflets featuring a residents’ pledge (along the lines of “I will do my bit to keep BS5 tidy” Ed.) were handed out to Saturday morning shoppers, mainly as a means to get them giving their views on the general state of the area. The photo below shows Hannah and Anthea on the stall, which also comprised daffodils which were handed out as a thank-you to all who stopped by.
Finally, there was also some public service grafitti on the footways of Easton for the Great British Spring Clean campaign. Did it survive long enough in the weekend rain to get the message across?
Some time ago in a meeting with Bristol Waste, the council-owned company responsible for cleaning the city’s streets and emptying residents’ bins, it was revealed that the company wanted to try and find commercial customers for its services.
Evidence has emerged that the company has now started seeking business customers for its collection services.
Bristol Waste employees have started handing out flyers like the one below to local shops, businesses, voluntary and community sector organisations in the Easton area of the city, all of which are responsible for making their own waste disposal arrangements (and which can be fined by the city council if these are found not be exist or be suitable. Ed.).
My informant from whom I acquired the flyer told me that Bristol Waste is trialling this scheme in Easton. This presumably follows the same line of thinking as that for the Stapleton Road waste trial (posts passim), which is generally along the lines of “if it works in Easton, we can get it to work anywhere in the city“. 🙂
Update: Bristol Waste was contacted for a comment and replied as follows:
We are speaking to businesses in a number of locations across the city including Stapleton Road, Bedminster & Avonmouth in this first phase of our commercial roll-out. The service will be available city-wide.
On Wednesday, Bristol Waste held a drop-in session at the Newton Hall for residents to get some (more) feedback on trial removal of communal waste bins along the Stapleton Road corridor.
Projected onto a wall was a presentation giving some facts, figures and information about the trial removal of the area’s 164 communal bins and their replacement with regular wheelie bins and bag collections (for those with no off-street storage space. Ed.).
Since the start of the trial at the end of October/beginning of November, it seems the trial has had a drastic effect, as the following figures reveal.
Recyling: up 16.7%
Refuse: down by 40.9%
Street cleansing requirement: down by 35.8%
In addition, fly-tipping enforcement in the area has been increased, with 62 notices served on individuals on how to present waste and 16 Fixed Penalty Notices (FPNs) served on individuals. Moreover, there are currently 35 active investigations into fly-tipping from domestic properties, whilst 8 local businesses have been served FPNs and another 8 are being investigated.
The most encouraging news came at the end of the presentation, as follows:
Due to the success of the scheme in terms of reduced waste, bulky fly-tipping and increased recycling levels we are proposing that we will continue the trial until March in order to gather more data and feedback.
In March, we anticipate recommending to the Neighbourhood Partnership that the service changes we have introduced remain in place for the area.
So it looks like scenes like the one below, taken in April 2016, will finally be a thing of the past along the Stapleton Road corridor. 😀
Somewhere under that pile of furniture is a communal bin.
An update has been received via Up our Street to questions raised by residents at the recent Neighbourhood Forum (posts passim).
The responses from Bristol Waste are reproduced verbatim below.
1. Litter bins at the Junction 3 development are reported to be too small and rarely emptied – is BWC responsible for these do you know?
Junction 3 is not yet adopted and therefore not BWC responsibility to cleanse although we did cleanse it this week due to a complaint. It would be the developer who would take up this until the road becomes adopted by BCC. It is very close to becoming adopted, so in light of this we will begin attending to avoid further issues for the community as it would appear the developer has relinquished all responsibility. It’s been added to the crew maps for this week.
2. Waverley Street communal bin is servicing some Fox Road properties from the back – a resident queried whether the replacement service brought in during the pilot could replicate this.
We have looked at this in more detail and we intend to keep the service as consistent as possible for residents so as not to cause confusion or inconvenience where a set up suits them in terms of the point of collection. We will therefore be able to empty wheelie bins and boxes from Waverley Street for the houses which back onto there from Fox Road. We have amended the pilot map accordingly.
Other updates
Reporting fly-tipping and illegal waste dumping
Tom Ward, the Streetscene Enforcement Officer for the area attended the meeting asked that local residents help him find and prosecute illegal fly tipping by reporting offences to him, try and take photos and record as much detail as possible if you witness this behaviour. Report online at https://www2.bristol.gov.uk/forms/fly-tipping#step1 or call Tom Ward on 07585307379.
Reporting issues with drains
One resident raised an issue with drains across the area – they are often blocked and smell bad. Please report any drain issues to Bristol City Council’s street issue area of the website: https://www.bristol.gov.uk/report-a-street-issue.
Finally, don’t forget the drop-in session later this week for the Stapleton Road communal bins trial (posts passim).
Bristol Waste Company, the wholly-owned council company that’s responsible for cleaning the streets, emptying the bins and collecting residents’ recycling (amongst other things. Ed.) is holding a drop-in session next week in Easton as part of the consultation on the pilot project removing communal bins along the Stapleton Road corridor.
The event will be held at Muller Hall, 39 Seymour Road, Bristol, BS5 0UW (map) on Thursday 29th September from 5.00 p.m. to 8.00 p.m.
Bristol Waste would like as many local residents and other interested parties as possible to come and give their views and prospective attendees are asked to confirm they will be coming so sufficient tea, coffee and biscuits can be arranged.
To confirm your attendance or for further details of the event please contact Jessica Tulit, Bristol Waste’s Community Engagement Officer, by emailing Jessica.Tulit [at] bristolwastecompany.co.uk or telephoning 0117 304 9022.
Unfortunately, your correspondent’s attendance is doubtful due to a family bereavement, but he will be there in spirit.
It’s good to see that Bristol Waste is prepared to tackled the problems that communal bins are causing locally after two and a half years of inaction from Bristol City Council, which introduced the 1,280-litre bins some years ago as a response to fly-tipping.
Despite a communal bin consultation (posts passim) last year revealed that the majority of residents believed fly-tipping had not been improved by the introduction of these monster bins: and my own fly-tipping records support this perception; communal bins are implicated in 60-67% of all the fly-tipping I report to the council.
However, despite this evidence, Bristol City Council has not had the courage to remove them, but merely tinkered with the details of their deployment.
In meetings with Bristol Waste, it has been made quite clear to both councillors and local residents that the company is just as fed up as we are with the problems caused by the local communal bins, which don’t just act as a magnet for fly-tipping. Analysis of the contents of the bins has revealed that only one-third is the stuff for which they were intended: the rest is made up of equal parts of recyclable materials and trade waste.
Those recyclable materials can still be recycled, but will attract a lower price due to the contamination to which they are subject in the communal bins.
Traders are supposed to have their own waste disposal contracts appropriate to their businesses. However, lots tend to cut corners – and their costs – by abusing the black communal bins earmarked specifically for use by residents (posts passim).
Provisional planning is underway for a reuse festival to be held in east Bristol on Saturday, 29th October.
The festival will take place around the St Marks Road area of Easton. The organisers are hoping space can be made available either at St Mark’s Baptist Church, the mosque in St Mark’s Road and Mivart Street Studios.
The provisional programme of activities is as follows:
The latest Easton & Lawrence Hill Forum held on Wednesday evening at Easton’s Pickle Factory attracted some 40 lively, vocal residents who’d come along to the event whose theme was waste management and its attendant problems such as litter and fly-tipping.
After the initial announcements, your ‘umble scribe was first out at the front of the hall to administer death by PowerPoint, giving a brief history of Tidy BS5, its activities and successes over the past two and a half years and calling for residents to act as the eyes and ears of Bristol City Council to combat fly-tipping, report litter and urging them to report other environmental crimes that blight the inner city such as fly-posting, dog fouling and graffiti. The Tidy BS5 slot finished with a showing of the “Green Capital Tale of Two Cities” video produced for viewing at full council last year.
I was followed on the microphone by Tracy Morgan, CEO of Bristol, the wholly-owned council waste company responsible for keeping the bins emptied and the streets tidy.
This was the main talk of the evening and Tracy gave some background of Bristol Waste’s work, which stretches from carrying out some 17 mn. waste collections around the city to clearing its streets of dead animals. Those collections yield an annual total of 140,000 tonnes of waste and recycling, of which 53,000 tonnes is sent for recycling or composting.
Tracy remarked, “We want to create a cleaner, greener Bristol… but waste is a shared responsibility,” before going on to the main point of her presentation – the 12 weeks-long trial to remove communal bins (otherwise known as skipbins or 1280l Eurobins. Ed.) from the Stapleton Road corridor.
The communal bins were introduced some years ago with a typical botched BCC consultation to attempt to tackle the problem of fly-tipping in the area. The communal bins consultation carried out last year (posts passim) clearly revealed that the introduction of the communal bins had failed in this respect.
Instead of the thrice-weekly communal bin collections, those streets where residents have sufficient storage space will be issued with 180l wheelie bins to be emptied fortnightly. Where this is not possible, residents will be given rubbish bags (hopefully gull-proof. Ed.) for collection on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, to be put out at a certain time.
After Tracy’s presentation came questions and comments from the audience to a panel comprising, Tracy, Tom Ward from enforcement and myself.
There was lots of intelligence offered to Tom, particularly as regards fly-tipping along the Lawrence Hill/Church Road corridor, although the main concern was the Stapleton Road trial and the communal bins.
One resident spoke passionately for retaining on Claremont Street and Seymour Road (which are regularly abused, like all the other communal bins within the proposed trial area. Ed.). However, I feel she’s on a hiding to nothing with her desires and she was the only person in the room defending the communal bins that other residents described as the bane of their lives and a health hazard since they attracted rats.
Other residents wanted to see more litter bins, particularly in parks and along the Bristol & Bath Railway Path, whilst the operation of the St Philips Recycling Centre (e.g. no pedestrian access) and the surly, unhelpful attitude of the Centre’s staff were also mentioned to Tracy for attention, as were the habit of recycling crews leaving “offerings” in the streets for the local gods and the reaction of certain street sweepers to local residents trying to help them.
No doubt this will be a matter to which forthcoming Neighbourhood Forums will return.
The photos used in the post are by kind permission of Up Our Street.
At the weekend, Cllr. Marg Hickman, the cabinet councillor for neighbourhoods and a great supporter of the Tidy BS campaign, shot the video below at the junction of Perry Street and Stapleton Road – a notorious fly-tipping hotspot which your correspondent has been reporting to Bristol City Council for the best part of two and a half years.
The Post’s report states that Marg also sent the footage and photos to the city council in the hope Bristol Waste, which manages street cleansing and waste collections, will finally begin to get to grips with the problem.
According to the Post a council spokesperson said:
The refuse team emptied the bins this morning, and Bristol Waste Company have two men on Stapleton Road every week day, so they will clear up following attendance from the refuse crew.
One of the street cleansing supervisors has been sent to check the area to make sure everything is clean and tidy.
The council may have sent out a street cleansing supervisor yesterday to check, but one needs to be at that location 24 hours a day, 7 days a week, since your correspondent reported another load of fly-tipping had mysteriously appeared in the same spot overnight.
Although progress on the ground may be slow, the Tidy BS5 campaign seems to be making better headway in the corridors of power since Marg’s intervention prompted Marvin Rees, Bristol’s elected mayor and past resident of Easton, to tweet on the filthy state of Stapleton Road, voicing his commitment to get our streets tidy.
However, Marvin and Marg have a big problem on their hands, as dumping litter and rubbish seem to be endemic throughout the city, not just in deprived BS5. Bristol’s annual Harbour Festival ended on Sunday evening and the Post noted in a separate report that the clean-up from the event is still continuing today, Tuesday.
Apologies for the short notice, but there’s a community litter pick taking place tomorrow, 15th June, at Owen Square Park in Easton (map) from 3.00 pm to 4.30 pm.
See the poster below.
Owen Square Park is having its grand re-opening on 18th June, so Tidy BS5 supporters Up Our Street were asked to get involved and support a litter pick just prior to the weekend event.
