politics

  • Community pick litter in Barton Hill

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

    There have been some unkind words on social media that all Tidy BS5 campaigners do is moan about the cleanliness of Bristol’s Easton and Lawrence Hill wards on social media.

    Yesterday those words were once again proved to be a lie (posts passim).

    A photo call break during the pick.
    A photo call break during the pick. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street.

    In brilliant sunshine a dozen or so volunteers turned up in Barton Hill Urban Park to clear away litter and rubbish. Those volunteers included local residents who saw what was going on and joined in. Others of all ages from those in primary school to pensioners expressed their support.

    Bags for collecting the litter were kindly provided by Keep Bristol Tidy, the accumulated litter removed over the weekend by Bristol City Council, whilst the event itself was co-ordinated by Up Our Street.

    Amongst those volunteers were local ward councillors Marg Hickman and Afzal Shah, both of whom have been invaluable supporters of the Tidy BS5 campaign.

    Barton Hill Urban Park is just in Lawrence Hill ward, with its boundary abutting the dividing line with Easton ward.

    The next community litter pick to be organised locally will be held on Saturday, 7th November between 11.00 am and 1.00 pm, with the assembly point being the car park of Masala Bazaar, 382-386, Stapleton Road, Easton, BS5 6NQ (map).

  • Dutch public sector to adopt ODF as standard?

    Steve WoodsOpen Data, Open Standards, Tech

    ODF file iconThe Dutch Standardisation Board would like to see the mandatory use of Open Document Format (ODF) for the country’s public sector organisations, according to a report on Joinup giving details of a presentation made by Nico Westpalm van Hoorn to the recent ODF Plugfest held in The Hague.

    Van Hoorn stated that over 450,000 documents are transferred each day between the Dutch central
    government and citizens or companies.

    His presentation contained 3 main messages:

    • The only way reuse of document content is achievable for open data is by using the ODF format;
    • The only way to ensure sustainable access is by using the ODF format; and
    • “This format cannot be opened,” as a remark by a public servant is not acceptable when somebody sends an ODF document.

    Within the Dutch government, ODF is used as the default format for editable documents that are posted online. Documents are by default shared as HTML, PDF (for archiving) and as ODF. Furthermore, all central government workstations are capable of working with ODF, suggesting that civil servants who cannot open the format need some IT training.

    Speaking at the same event, Steven Luitjes, director of Logius – an agency assisting government organisations in building e-government services, admitted that ODF is often ignored by public sector organisations and that a failure to standardise on formats is increasing the cost of public sector IT.

    If the Dutch government does adopt ODF as a standard, this would follow on from the recent announcement of the standard’s adoption by the Italian Ministry of Defence (posts passim) and the UK government’s publication of guidance for the introduction of ODF.

  • Community litter pick in Barton Hill on Saturday 26th

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    litterThe last email newsletter from Up Our Street that arrived earlier this week announced that a another community litter pick will be taking place in the very near future.

    It will be held on Saturday 26 September from 11am to 1pm and the venue will be Barton Hill’s Urban Park, Strawbridge Road, Bristol, BS5 9XE (map).

    The meet-up point will be the grassy area in front of the park.

    If the event follows the usual pattern, protective gloves and litter-pickers will be provided.

    The news that it will be held in Barton Hill will no doubt go down well in many quarters as Barton Hill is one of those forgotten corners of east Bristol.

  • Fouling FoI

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    no fouling road signOne topic which all newly elected local councillors anywhere in the country will encounter in their correspondence is dog fouling, especially as the UK’s dog population was estimated to be 9 million in 2014.

    All those dogs have to eat and dispose of the subsequent waste products estimated by Keep Britain Tidy (PDF) to weigh in at a 1,000 tonnes per day.

    Local authorities and town and parish councils have a variety of powers called Dog Control Orders to control the handling and behaviour of dogs on areas of land within their jurisdiction; these include an offence of failing to remove dog faeces.

    The maximum penalty for committing an offence under a Dog Control Order is £1,000 in a Magistrates Court. However council officers may alternatively issue a Fixed Penalty Notice, usually set at £75.

    Dear Bristol City Council,

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

    Kindly disclose the number of:

    a) fixed penalty notices issued
    b) prosecutions brought

    in the last 5 years for dog fouling

    1. within the entire local authority area
    2. specifically within Easton & Lawrence Hill wards

    Yours, etc.

    The answer was received earlier this week.

    You sent us a Freedom of Information request on 12/08/2015

    Your request number is CRN00017902

    Our reply to your request is:

    This response should answer your request in full.

    a) fixed penalty notices issued in the last 5 years for dog fouling

    1. within the entire local authority area – 79
    2. specifically within Easton & Lawrence Hill wards – 20

    b) prosecutions brought in the last 5 years

    1. within the entire local authority area – 32
    2. specifically within Easton & Lawrence Hill wards – 4

    One striking thing is just how low the overall figures for both fixed penalty notices and prosecutions are for a city of some 430,000 inhabitants, but then again the city council has a very small number of enforcement officers (posts passim) who also have to deal with fly-posting, fly-tipping, litter and other environmental crimes besides dog fouling.

    As can also be seen from the statistics, the city’s Easton and Lawrence Hill wards – the areas in which Tidy BS5 campaigners are active – account for about one quarter of fixed penalty notices issued for dog fouling throughout the entire city. Given the city council’s low levels of enforcement in other Easton and Lawrence Hill for enforcement officers’ other areas of responsibility, this figure is quite astounding. This figure could have been influenced by the dog fouling campaign carried out in both wards 2 years ago by Up Our Street.

    Dog fouling in Bristol can be reported online to the city council.

    In addition, for elsewhere in the UK, the Gov.uk website has a handy dog fouling reporting page.

  • Response to fly-posting FoI request

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    One of the many irritants and banes of urban life which can be reported online to Bristol City Council is fly-posting (unauthorised advertising).

    fly-posting in St Judes area of Bristol
    Fly-posting in St Judes, Bristol reported to council earlier this year

    Your correspondent recently submitted a Freedom of Information (FoI) request to Bristol City Council via the excellent WhatDoTheyKnow on fly-posting enforcement in Bristol as a whole and the 2 inner city wards of Lawrence Hill and Easton in particular.

    The text of the FoI request reads:

    Dear Bristol City Council,

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

    Kindly disclose the number of:

    a) fixed penalty notices issued
    b) prosecutions brought

    in the last 5 years for fly-posting

    1. within the entire local authority area
    2. within Easton & Lawrence Hill wards

    Yours etc.

    The council has now replied. The salient part of the response – minus the copyright notice and procedure for those dissatisfied with the reply – reads as follows:

    You sent us a Freedom of Information request on 12/08/2015

    Your request number is CRN00017905

    Our reply to your request is:

    FPNs – 68 with 2x in Easton/Lawrence Hill wards

    Pros – 6x with 3x in in Easton/Lawrence Hill wards

    This response should answer your request in full.

    Considering that Bristol is a city of 430,000 people, these figures do seem rather small, but then again so is the city council’s enforcement team (posts passim) which deals not just with fly-tipping, litter dog fouling and the like, but also fly-posting.

    Perhaps consideration should also be given to redeploying the council’s excessive numbers of press and PR staff.

  • Greenwash Capital news: streets of Bristol to get filthier

    Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Media, Politics, Social Media

    In a move that will put yet another black mark against they city’s undeserved year as European Green Capital, the streets of Bristol are set to get even filthier than they are already.

    Today’s Bristol Post reports that the number of street cleaners in Bristol has been cut by nearly a fifth since Bristol City Council took waste management and street cleansing back in-house last month from contractors Kier Group, those well-known supporters of former worker blacklisting outfit The Consulting Association.

    Fly-tipping on Pennywell Road, Easton
    Fly-tipping on Pennywell Road, Easton

    According to the Post, the council-run Bristol Waste Company (BWC) has notified “30 to 40” agency workers at the Hartcliffe depot that they would no longer be required as of yesterday (Monday). This will cut their numbers by about one-fifth. These workers deal with street cleaning and collecting fly-tipping.

    In addition, the Hartcliffe staff claim they have not been consulted on the cuts and accused the council of trying to save money at the expense of cleanliness (Bristol City Council has a long and proud tradition of avoiding and/or messing up consultation. Ed.).

    Furthermore, the Hartcliffe depot staff also claim they been provided with inadequate equipment to do the job. One anonymous worker is quoted by the Post as saying:

    Some of the guys haven’t been given clean gloves or protective gear, and many are still working with Kier equipment. The protective clothing is not adequate, and we have to deal with needles and dog poo and stuff.

    If there are insufficient staff available at BWC for the job in hand, perhaps Bristol City Council could reassign staff from elsewhere: ideal candidates for redployment and kitting out with a fluorescent uniform, safety gloves, boots and a broom would be those working in the local authority’s overstaffed press and PR department.

    In other Greenwash Capital news, it would appear that Bristol Mayor George Ferguson couldn’t really care less about the city’s cleanliness according to the tweet below from Kerry McCarthy MP.

    tweet from Kerry McCarthy stating when I last met George he was particularly unimpressed that people tweet him pics of rubbish

    Synonyms for unimpressed include apathetic, disinterested, unconcerned, undisturbed, untroubled and unmoved.

    If Kerry’s report of her meeting with the Mayor is accurate, that is a most disturbing development in the person whose supposed job is to take care the best interests of the city and its welfare.

  • Tidy BS5 – homage to Rio sweeper: the trailer

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

    A damp Sunday yesterday saw Make Sunday Special come to Easton’s Stapleton Road.

    The Tidy BS5 crew were there with an information stall inside Easton Leisure Centre with a group of young volunteers giving out advice on how to make the most of the city council’s recycling services, ordering new recycling bins and the like.

    Meanwhile the activists had arranged to do a bit of street theatre. Having persuaded a member of Bristol Samba to get dressed up in a customised Bristol Waste uniform and themselves armed with placards, we set off towards the main stage, filming as we went…

    … ending up storming the main stage!

    Tidy BS5's sweeper on stage at Make Sunday Special
    Tidy BS5’s sweeper on stage at Make Sunday Special

    The final edited video will be posted on YouTube in the near future, so keep your eyes peeled. 🙂

  • Whitehall’s latest open standards consultations

    Steve WoodsOpen Standards, Politics, Tech

    The British government has announced it is now consulting and seeking comments on its latest open standards proposals.

    The standards on which it is inviting comments are:

    Exchange of location point information
    An open standard for the exchange of location information, allowing coordinates to be translated between systems.

    Exchange of property / place address information
    A proposed standard to define and exchange address information between government departments. This is not about changing your postal address, but it could change the way government records information about your location.

    Publishing vacancies online
    A standard to help citizens searching for government jobs and apprenticeships.

    Once the comment period closes, proposals will be assessed by a panel composed of civil servants and industry specialists, which will decide whether the proposal should go forward for consideration by the Open Standards Board. The Open Standards Board will then make a recommendation about the standard’s adoption across government.

  • Tidy BS5 exclusive: Mayor’s office discovers copy & paste

    Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Tech

    Hannah Crudgington has kindly forwarded to me the reply she received from the office of Bristol Mayor George Ferguson to her video statement to July’s full council meeting. In addition, Hannah has kindly consented to let her response be reproduced in this blog post, as follows:

    Dear Ms Crudgington,

    Thank you for summiting [sic] your statement to Full Council in regards [sic] to the fly-tipping and litter issues you are currently experiencing in Easton.

    Easton has historically been an area where greater resources have been needed, and this is still the case today: the Council provides more resources for this area to remove waste and litter than in most other parts of the city. The introduction of communal bins seems to have improved the situation in Easton; prior to their introduction there was more widespread fly tipping [sic] throughout the area. In some cases, however, this measure has led to fly-tipping occurring around the bins, as it has been observed in other parts of the city, from Clifton to St Pauls. The communal bin areas are proactively patrolled by our contractor, who responds to fly-tip and street cleansing reports made through Customer Services or submitted on webforms throughout Bristol. Training has been provided to our contractor’s operatives to search waste for evidence of its potential source & evidence is passed to Streetscene Enforcement Team to investigate.

    We require the support of the public to help us identify offenders and would encourage all residents and visitors to Bristol to report incidents of fly-tipping they observe to Bristol City Council as soon as possible. To take enforcement action against offending individuals or businesses requires evidence and the more information we receive, the more likely we can build a case and target them. Recruitment is currently underway to return the Streetscene Enforcement Team to a full complement of 6 officers. This will allow for the officers to concentrate their activities within smaller areas and allow for more proactive work and operations. For instance, all businesses on Stapleton Road are currently in the process of being visited to check that they have relevant commercial waste contracts and make them aware that we are searching for evidence of commercial waste being deposited in the domestic communal bins. The Streetscene Enforcement Team continues to explore new ways of working with partners, both within the Council and local community, to target environmental crime and support improvements to the local environment. For this reason, we appreciate your efforts in working with us to achieve a cleaner Easton, and thank you for your patience while we effect the necessary improvements.

    Yours sincerely,

    (signed)

    George Ferguson CBE
    Mayor of Bristol

    Having carefully examined the text of Hannah’s reply and the one I received, it can be confirmed that the two responses are identical, even down to the same typographical errors.

    Whilst I am pleased to learn that IT skills in the Mayor’s office have now reached a level equivalent to those of novice computer users, it is disconcerting that the staff in the Mayor’s office still think it appropriate to draft the same response to 2 statements on the same subject that raised different points. This illustrates the continuing contempt by council officers for residents of the inner city – a contempt that should never have been allowed to develop in the first place, let alone persist down the decades.

    Bristol City Council should not be allowed to get away with this.

    At the same full council meeting there were 3 statements from campaigners trying to prevent part of the River Frome flood plain being used for luxury housing by Colston’s School. I wonder if they received identical responses too. If any of those campaigners did, kindly mention it in the comments below.

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