This morning residents living around Gaunt’s Ham Park in Barton Hill became the latest to add their support for the TidyBS5 campaign to rid the streets of BS5 of litter and fly-tipping (posts passim).
The picture below was posted online earlier this morning by Up Our Street.
Picture courtesy of Stacy Yelland
The more support, the more chance there is that Bristol City Council will take the residents of East Bristol seriously when the raise their voices, something they have not always done in the past.
The message about residents wanting BS5 to be kept tidier is spreading. Pictured below are some of the residents of Easton’s Bloy Street calling for cleanliness. The picture is courtesy of Stacy Yelland of Up Our Street.
Bloy Street calls for a Tidy BS5
Last Friday, together with local councillor Marg Hickman, I attended a meeting with Up Our Street and Bristol City Council to discuss litter and fly-tipping in the area. Some very interesting facts came out.
To begin with, the Neighbourhood Partnership area covered by BS5, consisting of Ashley, Easton and Lawrence Hill wards, is the worst in Bristol for fly-tipping, with 560 reports in the last quarter alone.
Our old friends, the communal bins were discussed at length, particularly their role as a magnet for fly-tipping (posts passim).
The opportunities for basing action on Bristol’s forthcoming tenure as European Green Capital 2015 were raised too. (If Bristol cannot clean its act up in places like the inner city, it’s in very grave danger of being Greenwash Capital instead! Ed.)
Street clutter was also on the agenda, something the motorists’ friends, Bristol’s Tories, have noticed, particularly as regards the city’s proliferation of road signs.
Turning to actions, as a result of the meeting, Marg and I will be visiting local schools to discuss litter, recycling and the like with pupils next year, in addition to which I’ve been asked to write a regular piece on rubbish-related matters in the quarterly local news sheet (also called Up Our Street. Ed.) that goes to Easton and Lawrence residents.
As another way of publicising TidyBS5, Hannah Crudgington has suggested a monthly litter champion award for those public-spirited people out there who are prepared put themselves out to deal with what others have failed to put in bins or take home with them.
Finally, other parts of the city, such as St Paul’s and St George, now which to emulate what’s been started in BS5.
One thing living in Bristol for nearly 4 decades has taught me is that Bristol City Council is profligate and lacks competence.
This was once again brought sharply into focus earlier this morning in a dead-end street called Clifton Street (map) leading to the back entrance of Easton CofE Primary School where I encountered the roadworks shown in the photograph below.
Bristol’s most pointless dropped kerbs?
The view shows the entrance into the staff car park of the school, the approach to which has just been enhanced by 2 dropped kerbs and textured paving on each of the street’s two footways as part of works to replace the street’s kerbstones.
There are only going to be two times in the day on weekdays when there is likely to be any traffic at all on Clifton Street – before and after the school day.
As for the use of textured paving, this is generally installed to assist the visually impaired and I cannot see many visually impaired people using dead-end streets in Easton anyway.
I wonder how much this municipal largesse by the city’s highways department has cost the public purse.
If the city council really wanted to spend money on roadworks in Easton, there’s plenty of other stuff that needs attention, as shown in the example below.
Picture courtesy of Hannah Crudgington
The damaged pedestrian refuge shown above is on Stapleton Road, just a couple of hundred metres away from Clifton Street. Local residents have been attempting to get the council to repair it for over 6 months, after it was damaged by a bus driver with delusions of driving competence. These efforts have so far come to nought.
In the recent TidyBS5 residents’ rubbish summit (posts passim), it was stated that council officers frequently intone the words “It’s the inner city” as an excuse for lack of action. Clearly this only works one way, i.e. when the lack of action concerns something either highlighted or desired by residents; when the initiative comes from within the council, there’s apparently no object, no matter how pointless what is proposed. I’ve encountered this ‘not invented here’ syndrome before in local authorities.
It’s normal to see a spate of daft council spending in March each year, just before the municipal financial year runs out. This year it seems that Bristol City Council is providing the residents of Easton with an early Christmas present in the form of dumb expenditure.
The summit itself was attended by 26 residents plus 2 local councillors, Marg Hickman and Hibaq Jama, as well as the city council’s neighbourhood manager, Kurt James. Some very clear messages came out of the summit about (the lack of) enforcement and the abuse and unpopularity of the area’s communal bins (aka skip bins. Ed.).
Residents spell out their message at the TidyBS5 summit
Another message that came out clearly was highlighted by Councillor Jama. She’s challenged council officers about the substandard level of service received by the residents of BS5 (principally Easton, Lawrence Hill and Barton Hill) and BS2 (principally St Pauls and St Werburghs). She related that officers use the mantra “It’s the inner city” as an excuse for their lack of action. The meeting also gave a clear message that this attitude is also not acceptable.
Living as I do near the Severn Beach line, I was pleased to read in the Bristol Post that the Victorian railway station building at Avonmouth has been given a temporary reprieve from demolition after campaigners lobbied the city council.
Network Rail wants to demolish the building, but this seems a daft move given the huge increases in passenger numbers on the Severn Beach line in the last few years. As the building is not currently protected by listing or is in a conservation area, a full planning application would normally not be needed for demolition.
Council officers say Network Rail has failed to give enough detail about their plans and have refused the demolition application, but could very well approve a new application.
A petition has been set up asking both the city council and Network Rail to reconsider the future of the station building.
Until quite recently the building was used as a hairdressers and there is no good reason – apart from the destructive intentions of Network Rail – why it should not be used for commercial purposes again (or even as a station building. Ed.).
Avonmouth’s Victorian station building. Image courtesy of mattbuck/ Wikimedia Commons
Local MP Charlotte Leslie has joined the ranks of campaigners trying to save it, remarking, “Avonmouth railway station is an irreplaceable part of our heritage and planning officers have a duty to ensure that our future generations benefit from its preservation. Indeed, it is my belief that the building should be subject to a Conservation Order or Listed status – owing to its local historical importance and obvious aesthetical [sic] qualities”.
Charlotte has been a passionate campaigner throughout her term of office for local rail, including the reopening of the Henbury Loop (posts passim).
On Monday 24th November, a Tidy BS5 summit is being held for residents at Felix Road Adventure Playground, Felix Road, Easton, Bristol, BS5 0JW (map) from 6.45 to 8.45 pm.
The aims of this meeting are:
To bring together residents who are concerned about fly-tipping, littering and rubbish and want to work together to do something about it;
To identify exactly what the problems are and generate ideas for how to solve them; and
To officially launch the Tidy BS5 campaign and a year of action to tackle these problems.
The meeting is being organised by residents, councillors and Up Our Street and will be chaired by local resident Liz Jones.
All are welcome and the local media have been invited.
Selby District Council’s website is not one of your correspondent’s regular online haunts. However, last week’s news section of the site carries a report with exclusive spectacular news: a Mr Steve Wadsworth has won a competition to name the new Selby Leisure Centre, which is due to open in 2015, by naming it, erm, Selby Leisure Centre!
There was even someone armed with a camera to record this historic event, whose like has probably not been equalled in that part of Yorkshire since the Battle of Stamford Bridge in 1066. 😉
Whilst the present government’s record may be regarded by some as controversial, to say the least, there’s one area where some real progress has been made; and that’s the adoption of open standards by central government.
Yesterday, the Open Standards Board announced that RFC 5545 (iCalendar) and RFC 6350 (vCard) have now been adopted as open standards for government for exchanging calendar events and contact details respectively.
This means both vCard and iCalendar are now in the implementation phase and Sir Humphrey and his colleagues are encouraged to report problems with adopted standards on the Standards Hub.
The vCard and iCalendar formats have both been in widespread use for more than 10 years. The versions selected by the Board are specified and maintained by the Internet Engineering Task Force who ratify a number of commonly used extensions. The versions are largely backwards compatible with previous versions produced and consumed by a very wide range of applications.
What could George have been doing in Easton to have fled minus his trousers? Answers in the comments below.
Of course, as a politician George sometimes risks more than the loss of his trousers; he’s wagering the shirt off his back on 2 potentially huge white elephant projects in Bristol both being funded by municipal borrowing – the Bristol Arena and Metrobus/BRT, whose costs keep escalating out of control.
A couple of years ago, after a less than ideal consultation by Bristol City Council (my own street was omitted from the process! Ed.), communal bins – called skip bins by some – were imposed on residents.
They are not popular with locals since they attract abuse – fly-tipping by traders, dumping of recyclable materials by the uncaring and so on – and are unappealing to have outside one’s front door. They may be a good idea for block of flats if adequately screened, used properly and regularly emptied, but not for residential areas or shopping streets. Even in my own road where the communal bins never suffer the levels of abuse or levels of filling that they do in on busier streets, they are not popular with residents.
A local Stapleton Road resident has now produced a short video to draw attention to the problems they engender and her evident frustration with the council’s attitude to Easton.
As regards abuse of the communal bins, recent analysis of 2 bins on Stapleton Road by the city council revealed that their contents were roughly:
one-third waste for landfill;
one-third recyclable materials; and
one-third illegally dumped trade waste.
That analysis shows there is clearly a lot that needs to be done both as regards educating residents on what materials can be recycled, as well as enforcement, cracking down on traders who are not complying with their obligations in respect of proper disposal of the waste from their businesses.
When it comes to trade waste, the council has 2 options when it comes to enforcement action. It can impose a fixed penalty of £300 or taking offenders to court, where a maximum fine of £50,000 and/or up to five years imprisonment.
As regards the siting of communal bins, the idiocy evident in the video is not an isolated instance. Walton Street in Easton, which is some 300 metres in length, has one communal bin, whilst adjoining Northcote Street – a third of the length of Walton Street – has three!
If having to put out the rubbish on a cold, rainy night, I’d prefer to live in Northcote Street. Wouldn’t you?
Furthermore, it’s not just the major thoroughfares that have problems with fly-tipping, trade waste and the like, as this blog has previously highlighted with Jane Street (posts passim) on the borders of Redfield and Lawrence Hill districts.
Next month a residents’ rubbish summit will be held at Felix Road Adventure Playground as part of the #tidyBS5 initiative. Details will be posted here when they are finalised.
