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Wednesday 5 April 2017

No one believes Council's figures on street cleanliness

One of the large volume of topics that residents raise with me, in my councillor’s post bag, is the large numbers of missed collections of kitchen waste.

In Southfield, residents saw, when the wheelie bins rolled in - like Daleks – dirty streets and a huge number of missed collections of their household waste. Since then kitchen waste has not been collected as often as it should be.

Sometimes the same person has missed their collection for many consecutive weeks. Other times whole streets are missed.

From a resident who comments recently the contractor said they did not collect the waste because the resident’s gate was closed (not locked, just closed!) Given the Council is allowing the contractor to get away with such a poor level of service a positive future is not likely.

Liberal Democrats believe that how clean our streets are and how the contractor is performing should be more transparent. The facts published by Ealing Council often are always a positive gloss on the reality of what is happening in our streets.

One weekend the Southfield Liberal Democrats found over 400 environmental faults and issues. At a similar time the Council said things were fine!

Given this I am challenging the Council’s portfolio holder, responsible for rubbish issues, to visit Southfield ward and see for himself. Cynically I expect him to prime the contractors first (so they can buck their ideas up in the short term) but let’s hope he and the contractors learn a few lessons about the need to keep our streets clean.


Liberal Democrats say that if the portfolio holder refuses an invitation for a visit, then nobody can really respect him. I say that he should clean all 100 or so streets in Southfield until residents are satisfied!