Myself and Councillor Nigel Bakhai met Ealing Council's officer in charge of getting our streets clean

Myself, Councillor Nigel Bakhai and other Councillors in Ealing have had many reports of the poor quality of service by the Council's contractor who is responsible for sweeping our streets and collecting our household waste and recyclables.

Tonight myself and Councillor Nigel Bakhai met with one of Ealing Council's managers who is responsible for monitoring Enterprise, the contractor, to get them to do what they signed up for in the £20 million a year contract.

A street sweeper

After a failure to collect our waste and recyclables from April there are still problems. A number of points were uncovered:

• Although Enterprise now have all the new recycling vehicles (that arrived late) they are less efficient than planned and so they have now had to alter again the collection rounds so there are more of them but each one is smaller.
• Because Enterprise are still not completing their daily collection of waste until sometimes after 5pm it means that many of the street sweepers and litter pickers are doing this BEFORE the waste is collected - and so lots of litter is left for up to a week. The Council have asked that by the end of August they sort the issue out to stop this from happening
• We looked at the system by which the Council tracks checks that Enterprise have cleaned our streets. We suggested a few alterations which may highlight roads that are not checked frequently - as the checks are mainly done on a random basis.
• Roads that have been graded as not being clean and then have been improved and rechecked go down as being clean. This means that the previous inspection which highlighted the road was not clean is not traceable and so will distort the figures that are reported to members of the public.
• Glass if reported should be removed within an hour of being reports. So if you see any glass (which could cut children's legs if near to a playground for example) should be reported at any time to 020-8825-6000.

Clearly Ealing Council wants to do better but it appears that Enterprise are struggling with getting to grips with the contract it won. I say the Council needs to be tougher and ensure that fines or rebates to the Council are issued. Money speaks volumes.