Bristol | Steve Woods

Bristol City Council must have a real bullshit crisis

06/08/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Responses have been received to my recent Freedom of Information Act (FoI) requests requests to Bristol City Council.

These concerned the relative numbers of staff involved in press, PR, etc. and so-called ‘streetscene (i.e. fly-tipping, litter, dog fouling and the like). This is a subject which this blog has tackled previously. However, I felt it necessary to obtain the most up-to-date figures I could.

The FoI request re press, PR and communications officers read as follows:

Dear Bristol City Council,

This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Kindly disclose the number of press, public relations and communications staff/officers who are employed at present by Bristol City Council and/or have their place of work in Bristol City Council offices.

Yours etc.

The response to the request reads:

The number of press, public relations and communications staff/officers who are employed at present by Bristol City Council and/or have their place of work in Bristol City Council offices:
(The list below shows the number of full-time equivalent staff)
Service Manager: Corporate Communications x 1
Service Manager: Public Relations x 1
Design Manager x 1
Senior Designer x 1
Designer x 4.49
Assistant Designer x 5
Senior Communications & Marketing Officer x 5.41
Senior Communication Officer – Enterprise Zone x 1
Senior Communication Officer (Corporate Campaigns and Special
Projects Team) x 0.81
Marketing & Communications Officer (Level 1 and 2) x 9.51
Marketing & Communcations Support Officer x 4
Internal Communications Manager x 1
Internal Communications Support Officer x 2.39
Channel Editor (Level 2) x 1
Digital Public Relations Officer x 2
Senior Public Relations Officer x 1.2
Public Relations Officer x 5
Exhibition Designer x 1
Apprentice x 1
Total Full-Time Equivalents: 48.81

The following request was submitted in respect of streetscene enforcement officers.

Dear Bristol City Council,

This is a request for information under the Freedom of Information Act.

Kindly disclose the total number of streetscene officers who are employed at present by Bristol City Council, as well as the total number employed in the last financial year.

I would also be grateful if you would inform me whether the said officers are employed full-time or part-time and how many, if any, are on long-term sick leave.

Yours etc.

This was duly answered as follows:

Our reply to your request is:

In 2014/15 we employed 5.7 full-time equivalent (FTE) Streetscene Enforcement Officers up until November 2014. Since November 2014 we have employed 4.7 FTE. There are four full-time officers and one
part-time officer. Presently, we plan to recruit an additional 1.5 FTE.

There are currently no Streetscene Enforcement Officers on long-term sick leave

The staffing situation is thus more out of kilter than was originally imagined. Bristol City Council is now actually employing more press, PR and communications staff than when examined previously by the Press Gazette in its FoI request.

Bristol City Council priority: weasel words in press releases

Presumably this is due to the additional quantities of bullshit needing to be shovelled out of the Council House due to Bristol’s unwarranted elevation this year to European Green(wash) Capital.

On the other hand, council staffing managers have deemed that the city can get by with a maximum of 6 people chasing fly-tippers and litter droppers for the time being.

Not a council priority: fly-tipping in Woodborough Street, BS5

In my opinion the city would be a tidier and more truthful place if the above numbers were reversed, with the council employing 49 enforcement officers (they’re really needed! Ed.) and under 6 press, PR and communications wonks.

Whether you agree or disagree with my opinion, please feel free to comment below.
Tidy BS5 in the council chamber

21/07/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Politics

Today there’s a full meeting of the elected members of Bristol City Council at 6 pm.

Each council meeting has a slot of 30 minutes allotted to statements from members of the public to raise concerns.

This evening’s meeting will be treated to 2 statements by Tidy BS5 campaigners, namely Hannah Crudgington and your ‘umble scribe.

In addition, Hannah will be screening a video of one minute duration to the assembled councillors and officers.

Hannah will also be making a statement to councillors after her video. This statement reads as follows:

I have made my home and set up my business in Easton of the last 12 years or so.

It is extremely sad to report that after an initial improvement and vibrancy, the last five years have seen a huge deterioration and this is largely due to ill thought decisions by people without practical experience of the area at grass roots level.

Bristol City Council has been made well aware of the issues of waste in BS5 and yet the problems are getting worse. In the last year, it has gone from fly tipping and litter to fly-tipping, litter and a horrendous stench. So it is no longer an annoyance or inconvenience but more a health hazard.

So what is Bristol City Council doing to resolve this, what are your time scales and finally would you put up with this?

My statement will be:

It is with a sense of profound despair and regret that I’ve watched the problem of litter and fly-tipping in the Easton area over the past few decades.

Given that Bristol is European Green Capital for 2015, it’s an absolute disgrace that scenes such as those in Hannah Crudgington’s video are a daily occurrence in the inner city.

However, fly-tipping and litter are not just an eyesore; they are a health and safety risk, attract vermin such as rats and gulls, make people feel insecure on the streets and attract anti-social behaviour; residents have observed people urinating on piles of fly-tipped rubbish and using the communal bins installed by the council as a screen for defecating in the streets.

Would you tolerate this in the area where you live? We refuse to.

Concerned residents have been raising these matters with local councillors and council officers for well over one year. Given the glacial pace at which Bristol City Council moves, it has taken that long for streetscene enforcement officers to turn their attentions to Easton and Lawrence Hill. Whilst I appreciate the enforcement officers’ efforts I feel that their presence may be a matter of too little, too late.

Furthermore, the total number of these enforcement officers is very small: there are only 6 of them to cover the whole city, far too few for the size of the city’s problems with litter and fly-tipping, which it must be remembered is not exclusive to the 2 wards in which I and other Tidy BS5 campaigners are working. I regularly receive reports – as I’m sure ward councillors do – of problems with litter and fly-tipping in Ashley, Bedminster, Fishponds, St George, Avonmouth and Lawrence Weston, to name a few more areas of our city blighted by environmental crime.

Finally, it’s worth noting that the city council employs 43 press and PR officers – more than seven times the number of streetscene enforcement officers. This suggests to me that the city council has a warped sense of priorities: it has a real citywide problem with litter, fly-tipping and other environmental crimes; it does not have a problem with weasel words.

Communal bin in Villiers Road, Easton attracting dumped furniture

The one real disappointment is that Bristol’s elected mayor George Ferguson will not be in attendance at the council meeting. Our George has junketed off to Rome, where he has deigned to give the Pope an audience.
Mini Ashes fever reaches BS5

08/07/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Tech

It’s the first day of the first test match in Cardiff of the latest Ashes series being played between England and Australia.

One household in Beaumont Street in the Easton area of Bristol has entered into the spirit of the occasion, as shown below.

As it’s the postage stamp-sized front garden of a terraced house, the players are a mix of Playmobil* and Lego figures, not life size.

Note the loving preparation that’s gone into the pitch, an uncovered one (naturally) in line with traditional British values and thus guaranteed to cheer the most outspoken of cricket commentators – a certain G. Boycott.

Talking of Mr Boycott, if you’re a fan of the Test Match Special radio commentary on the BBC, add to your enjoyment of the excellent commentary by Aggers, Blowers et al.; make sure you’ve got your Boycott Bingo card ready for when the world’s greatest living Yorkshireman sounds off (posts passim). 🙂

* Irreverent IT news site The Register has a sizable Playmobil archive.
New amenity in Lawrence Hill

06/07/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics

Over the weekend a new amenity – either an art installation or a new public convenience – has appeared on the A420 Lawrence Hill in east Bristol.

If the latter, it’s conveniently located next to the site of Lawrence Hill’s original Victorian public lavatories, sadly demolished some years ago by Bristol City Council and the site sold off to developers.

Public convenience or crap art installation?

Continuing with the theme of convenience, if it is a new public lavatory – whether provided at public expense or by the private sector – it will no doubt come as a relief to the thousands of commuters from Kingswood, Hanham and other parts of South Gloucestershire who clog up the A420 inbound on weekday mornings and outbound on weekday evenings respectively.

However, I suspect it is the work of east Bristol’s shadowy network of fly-tippers, in which case it needs reporting to Bristol City Council. 🙂
On the buses: greenwash

01/07/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics

Perhaps the most visible aspect of Bristol’s year as European Green Capital is the year’s sponsorship by local transport monopolists FirstGroup.

As a result, there have been some strange coloured – one might almost say greenwashed – buses thundering through this proud and ancient city, as captured below.

FirstGroup bus in full greenwash livery

However, FirstBus has also been able to buy a ‘greenwash-lite‘ version for its sponsorship that consists of the Bristol Green Capital logo slapped on top of its usual ‘Barbie‘ livery.
The flanks of the Barabie double-deckers now have the Bristol Green Capital logo splashed across their sides, whilst the single-deckers have a smaller version the logo above the driver’s cab.

Barbie meets greenwash

Whilst public transport is a greener option than using a private motor car, emissions from the diesel fuel on which buses run.

According to Wikipedia:

It is reported that emissions from diesel vehicles are significantly more harmful than those from petrol ones.Diesel exhaust contains toxic air contaminants and is listed as carcinogen for humans by the IARC (part of the World Health Organization of the United Nations) in group 1. Diesel exhaust contains fine particles which are harmful. Diesel exhaust pollution was thought to account for around one quarter of the pollution in the air in previous decades, and a high share of sickness caused by automotive pollution.

Any resemblance between the full greenwash livery and the British Racing Green livery of the old Bristol Omnibus Company is purely coincidental.

Whatever would Blakey say? 😉
Bristol has a fly-tipping crisis, not a PR crisis

01/07/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Oddities, Politics
Do you know how many press and PR officers are employed by Bristol City Council?

Go on, have a guess!

If you didn’t know, the latest available figure is 43, according to this Press Gazette article from April 2015 on its the Freedom of Information Act request which asked 435 city, borough and district councils across the UK how many people they employ in their communications departments.

Bristol City Council actually has the equal third largest press and PR staff of all local authorities in the UK, a position it shares with Sheffield City Council:
- Manchester City Council: 77
- Leeds City Council: 47
- Bristol City Council: 43
- Sheffield City Council: 43
- Glasgow City Council: 41
Remember that figure of 43. Now try and guess how many ‘streetscene‘ (litter & fly-tipping) enforcement officers Bristol City Council employs. The people that deal with prosecuting the abuse of communal bins by traders (posts passim) and the like.

Fly-tipped trade and other waste in Pennywell Road, Easton, earlier this week

The answer is 6. That’s equivalent to one council enforcement officer for over 71,600 residents.

The answer was revealed in a FoI request I submitted back in November 2014, as per the transcript below.

Kindly disclose the number of streetscene enforcement officers employed by Bristol City Council during all financial years since April 2010 to the present day.

There were seven streetscene enforcement officer [sic] employed between April 2010 and March 2014. From April 2014 until present day there are six.

That’s right! Six enforcement officers for the whole of Bristol. However, there’s enough grot and bad waste management behaviour just in Easton and Lawrence Hill wards alone to keep all 6 of those officers permanently occupied.

Returning to the number of officers per head of population outlined above, Bristol City Council has one press/PR wonk per 1,000 inhabitants.

Anyone would think the local authority was suffering a public relations crisis.
Communal bins consultation in BS5

24/06/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Regular readers of the posts tagged with Tidy BS5 on this blog cannot have failed to notice the extent to which communal bins (also known by some as skip bins. Ed.) have been implicated in fly-tipping around the Easton area.

The communal bin outside 18 Stapleton Road, a regular site for the fly-tipping of trade and other waste

The communal bins were introduced by Bristol City Council along Stapleton Road and in the adjoining some years ago, allegedly in response to a problem with fly-tipping in the area. The council ostensibly carried out a consultation before the bins were installed, but as is usual with Bristol City Council, the consultation was less than perfect, with some streets not being consulted at all; indeed the first my neighbours and I knew of the scheme was when our wheelie bins were all taken away by council contractors in the back of a lorry!

Lots of residents have clearly expressed their feelings about the bins being a magnet for fly-tipping of all kinds – bulky, trade and household waste – hence the present consultation.

The door-knocking itself is being conducted by officers from Bristol City Council, staff from Up Our Street and volunteers from the local community. Your ‘umble scribe has helped to canvass residents on 4 streets about their views. Residents are being asked whether fly-tipping has or hasn’t increased since the introduction of the communal bins, how often they are seen overflowing, what are the reasons for fly-tipping and overflowing, whether they’d like a return to individual wheelie bins and if they have any other suggestions for the council to tackle litter, fly-tipping and general grot in the area.

From my experience of knocking doors and filling in the consultation forms, some of those ideas from residents for dealing with the litter, fly-tipping and the like are very varied and interesting. They vary from actions that the council could take, such as better enforcement of litter and fly-tipping, more education on fly-tipping and litter, as well as better planning controls to deal with the Stapleton Road area’s of proliferation of fast food shops and takeaways, whose customers seem to like leaving the inedible bits of their meals as offerings to the genus loci on their way home. Others these ideas from the doorstep would require action by central government, such as re-introducing a deposit on drinks containers. Other ideas suggested were fining people who refuse to recycle, the removal of the charges for bulky waste collection. Perhaps the most unusual was paying the homeless to collect recyclable off the streets.

The consultation will be concluded by the end of the month and the results will help shape future waste management policy in the BS5 area. So if you live on or around Stapleton Road and someone with a clipboard arrives on your doorstep, s/he or they could be there courtesy of the campaigning of Tidy BS5.
Coming soon: the Greenwash Capital Awards

24/06/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Politics

Awards recognising local people and businesses which support the environment have been launched by the Bristol Post, the rag of that name reports on its website today.

The article continues that the Bristol Post Green Capital Awards will celebrate those people who are making our city a greener, healthier, happier place to live and work.

The article does quote the chairman of Bristol 2015 – a company established by the city council to run this year-long green-tinged public relations exercise – admitting that Green Capital has not reached all parts of Bristol.

That being so, I’d like to see an alternative set of awards that won’t go to the usual suspects amongst Bristol’s great and good and their pet vanity projects. Let’s call them the Greenwash Capital Awards.

Some of these can be awarded already.

For starters, there’s the Green Transport Award, for which there can only be one set of winners, namely the selfish individuals who all drive their vehicles containing just one person into the city from the surrounding areas of South Gloucestershire, North Somerset and Bath & North East Somerset, causing congestion, pollution and getting in the way of local bus services.

Selfish commuters clogging Bristol’s M32 inbound

Then there’s the Green Waste Management Award. This prize should I believe be split between the citizens of Bristol who managed to generate 18% more waste for landfill last year, Bristol City Council, which seems to be labouring under the delusion that exporting what would go to landfill to Sweden for incineration in power stations is a good idea and finally the people – both traders and others – who think that the BS5 postcode area is the natural home for the city’s fly-tipping.

One of the regular but ephemeral arts installations on Stapleton Road; is it critiquing the throwaway society?

How about the Habitat and Biodiversity Destruction Award? There’s a clear winner for this one: the four councils making up the West of England Partnership and their ludicrous transport white elephant, the Metrobus scheme.

Finally, for the time being there’s the Green Waste of Money Award. That goes to all the money wasted to date on so-called ‘arts’ projects as part of Green Capital.

If you can think of any further worthy recipients of a Greenwash Capital Award, please add them in the comments below.
Reuse Recycle

30/05/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

On Wednesday 17th June an event called Reuse Recycle is being held at Easton Community Centre, Kilburn Street, Bristol BS5 6AW (map) from 3.30 pm to 6.30 pm.

The event will start with a meet-up at Easton Community Centre at 3.30pm for a litter pick of the area, after which it’ll back at the ECC for food, raffle, clothes swaps, bike repairs, Litterarti and stalls. Solon has dontated prizes for raffles and any proceeds will go towards the work of the Tidy BS5 campaign.

Housing association United Communities initiated the event and will be providing a trailer for the litter pick to sort recyclable materials out. They are also providing litter pickers.

For more information contact Tamsin (tamsin (at) unitedcommunities.org.uk) or Lorena (lorenal (at) eastonandlawrencehill.org.uk.

See you there!
Help local councils take action against littering from vehicles

26/05/2015 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

Where litter belongs. Picture courtesy of Wikimedia Commons
For as long as I’ve been going abroad to the mainland of Europe – some 45 years – one aspect that I’ve never failed to notice is just how clean other countries are compared with the United Kingdom. During my first visit to Germany in 1975 the streets – compared to those in UK – seemed clean enough to eat one’s dinner off.

It’s unfortunate that despite the decades of campaign efforts of Keep Britain Tidy and local campaigners throughout the country, the United Kingdom remains the dirty man of Europe. A stroll down any street or road in the country will readily confirm this if readers have any doubts.

A major element in littering is stuff dumped out of cars by the lazy and uncaring. This ranges from small stuff like cigarette butts to discarded fast food packaging from meals eaten on the move, right up to really nasty stuff such as used disposable nappies.

The UK is a very scenic country – why trash it?

Why indeed?

38 Degrees Petition

There are other people equally concerned about the amount of litter in the UK and a petition has just been posted on 38 Degrees.

The introduction to the petition reads:

This petition is calling for local councils in Yorkshire and across England to be given new powers to fine people who litter from vehicles. Littering shouldn’t be a consequence-free crime and enforcement acts as a deterrent as well as a punishment. The Government already approved the necessary legislation in 2014 but Defra has delayed producing the required regulations for over a year. This delay must end.

Why helping councils with enforcement is important

The petition’s explanatory text continues:

Clearing up litter costs Yorkshire councils over £77m a year, contributing to the national figure of over £800m. Clearing roadsides is particularly costly and dangerous, so preventing littering from vehicles is extremely important. Local councils said for many years that they needed new powers to fine people who throw litter from vehicles, as a £75 fine will make most people think twice before throwing litter again.

The existing law, in the Environmental Protection Act 1990, said the council needed to prove which person in the vehicle threw the litter – something that was mostly impossible. The Government agreed to introduce a new law, via the Anti-social Behaviour, Crime and Policing Act 2014, which meant local councils can issue a fine to the registered keeper of the vehicle, which is what happens when vehicles are caught speeding and or are parked in the wrong place.

To make sure councils know how to implement this new law, the Government needs to provide them with regulations. However, the department responsible – Defra – has delayed these regulations for over a year and councils are no nearer to being able to take action against litterers. This also means there are now two pieces of legislation on litter that are essentially useless.

The Secretary of State must make sure her officials are taking the required action to bring this legislation to life and to prevent further littering from vehicles.

Sign the petition.

38 Degrees Petition

Why helping councils with enforcement is important

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