Tiny victory about bins

Well, let’s hope so. I’ve been getting increasingly fed up with the disgusting state of the street (Gaynesford Road, Church Rise) with litter and bins left out. So I wrote to environmental services with photos. This is the reply

Many thanks for coming back so quickly and with the photos, which are very helpful. I am hoping that we will be able to resolve these issues quite quickly. I have asked the Senior Waste Manager to speak to the crews who collect from these roads and remind them that they should be sweeping up any spillages on collection day. The crews should also be returning the bins to the appropriate residents boundary after collection without causing an obstruction.

** If you are able to provide me with the numbers of the houses that seem to be leaving their bins on the pavement, I can arrange for a letter to be sent to those residents, if no improvement is seen within a few weeks we can send another, more strongly worded letter (but we find this is often not necessary).**

I’m going to follow up with house numbers as best I can (and hope I don’t get my car keyed) because, inconsiderate neighbours, you need to have a word with yourselves, and incompetent council, so do you.

I’m now mad as hell!

Actually I think the street cleaning team are super responsive when you make any complaints. I’ve made many complaints about bins blocking the pavement and they have been very quick to follow up. I recently wrote to them asking to find a fix to the issue of nasty overflowing bins on David’s road by the nursery which was encouraging persistent waste dumping and the pavement being blocked and messy. Within a week they responded by visiting the site and removing all unmarked bins. Its made a huge difference.

That’s good to know. But the rubbish collection service is pretty poor and adds to the general air of unkemptness that is creeping in - horrible pavements, weeds unchecked everywhere, stinky bins piled on corners, litter blowing around, trees not maintained. I’m beginning to dislike living here! I’d like to live somewhere where the streets are kept clean and people are sufficiently invested in their neighbourhood that they don’t need to be told, by ‘strongly worded letter’ to take their sodding bins out of the way!

I’ve received a couple of letters about this (in a different part of SE23) from the council. We always take our bins back onto the property in time, so I think the council have just sent a letter to every house on the street (and the second letter says “if you are residents who do bring in your bins please disregard this letter” - despite the address having our house number on).