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The FoI requests go in for #tidybs5

01/10/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

The struggle to clear the inner city of fly-tipping and litter continues (posts passim).

Earlier this week it was revealed that ward councillor Marg Hickman had taken Assistant Mayor Mark Bradshaw on a walk along Stapleton Road. Cllr. Bradshaw professed himself to be shocked and angered by what he saw. Let’s hope his involvement manages to stir council officers to take the area’s problems rather more seriously than they have to date.

Jane Street – a regular fly-tipping hotspot in BS5. Picture courtesy of @HelmoreAndHunt

My latest 2 FoI requests have now been submitted. Both seek to see how the BS5 area compares with the rest of the city as regards enforcement action as there is a distinct impression locally that the area is regarded as less worth bothering about than the city’s more affluent parts. The first concerns fly-tipping in the BS5 area and is reproduced below.

Dear Bristol City Council,

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

1. As regards Stapleton Road (the section between its junctions with Trinity Road and Fishponds Road) in particular:

a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for fly-tipping on this road in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

b) How many people have been prosecuted for fly-tipping on this road in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

2. As regards the BS5 area in general:

a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for fly-tipping in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

b) How many people have been prosecuted for fly-tipping in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

Yours, etc.

The second concerns the associated problem litter.

Dear Bristol City Council,

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

1. As regards Bristol in general:

a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for dropping litter throughout the city in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

b) How many people have been prosecuted for dropping litter throughout the city in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

2. As regards the BS5 area in general:

a) How many fixed penalty notices have been issued for dropping litter in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

b) How many people have been prosecuted for dropping litter in this area in the last last 4 calendar years and to date in the current calendar year?

Yours, etc.
#tidyBS5 in the Bristol Post

17/07/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

This blog has previously highlighted the problem of fly-tipping in the Easton and Lawrence Hill areas of Bristol (posts passim).

The move to get more people involved in reporting and combating this menace that blights the inner city took another step forward two days ago when it was featured in the Bristol Post, as shown by the following screenshot.

I was contacted by the Post’s Sophie Prideaux and we exchanged emails that went on to form the basis of the article and, as I’m feeling charitable, I’ll even forgive her for changing my surname from plural to singular halfway through the piece. 🙂

Sophie also contacted my local councillor, Marg Hickman, who’s been a great support from the outset.

Another purpose of the article was to publicise the #tidyBS5 hashtag, which is being used to highlight the scourge of fly-tipping in the BS5 postal area on social media, such as Twitter.

As regards Marg’s involvement, the Post states:

Mrs Hickman, a Labour councillor for Lawrence Hill ward, is urging residents to get behind #tidyBS5, saying it’s an “important initiative to improve the quality of life of residents living in BS5”.

Read the Post’s report.
#tidyBS5 gains momentum

13/07/2014 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics, Social Media

After the last Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Forum meeting where I talked about fly-tipping in my area of Bristol (posts passim), it was suggested to me that I devise a hashtag for use on Twitter and elsewhere to help highlight the problem. My answer was #tidyBS5.

The hashtag and its use have now been given another boost by publicity in the fortnightly Easton & Lawrence Hill Neighbourhood Management email bulletin.

There’s also a meeting with councillors and officers on fly-tipping and rubbish in just over a week’s time to which I’ve also been invited. Let’s hope it ends in some proper enforcement and action to make scenes like the one below a thing of the past.
The vision thing

08/05/2021 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

“The vision thing” is a comment made by George H. W. Bush ahead of the 1988 United States presidential election when urged to spend some time thinking about his plans for his prospective presidency.

The embracing of vision – with or without the thing – is widespread in public life in Britain at both local and national levels. Every party leader is expected to have one; and any plans for the wholesale remodelling of large areas of our town and cities are expected incorporate vision too.

An investigation into the prevalence of vision in the organs of the British state reveals just how ingrained use of the term is. A quick Google search for items containing “vision” on websites within the .gov.uk domain is revealing.

No, your eyes do not deceive you – 2.3 million instances of use.

Looking more locally, a recent search (mid-April) of the Bristol City Council website for the term returns a total of over 4,200 hits. It has probably risen since last month (and with all that evident ocular deployment, one would have thought that the inhabitants of the Counts Louse – which some refer to as City Hall – would realise there’s a major cleanliness problem with the city’s streets. Ed.).

With all that vision in use in the country, opticians and their colleagues must be raking in the money. 😀

Sie hatten Recht, Herr Bundeskanzler!

Or is it necessarily opticians and associated practitioners that should be profiting from this phenomenon? There is some scepticism about the benefits of visions.

George H.W. Bush was mentioned at the start of this post. One of his contemporaries was the former West German Chancellor Helmut Schmidt.

Schmidt was very dismissive of visions and is on record as stating the following:

Wer Visionen hat, soll zum Arzt gehen.

This translates into English as:

Anyone who has visions should go to the doctor.

Will anyone working for the British state be visiting their GP soon, either individually or en masse?

I doubt it.

Finally, when someone summoned up the courage to ask Schmidt what his big vision was, he is reputed to have referred them to Bush! 😀
Illiteracy or bloody-mindedness?

29/04/2021 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

It’s now 10 years since TidyBS5 was inaugurated by local residents with the support of local ward councillors to campaign for a more pleasant street scene in the Bristol council wards of Easton and Lawrence Hill.

During all that time, both residents and councillors has persistently call on Bristol City Council to increase both the presence and visibility of enforcement action, but our efforts have only been rewarded in the last couple of years with higher fixed penalty notices (FPNs) for environmental crimes in 2019 and the recent recruiting of more enforcement officers (posts passim).

Largely as a result of the actions of local residents raising awareness of environmental blight, the streets of Lawrence Hill and Easton are now marginally freer of fly-tipping than they were then, but problems still persist, not helped by the lower footfall due to lockdown and the amount of DIY and building works being undertaken.

This was spotted at the junction of Walton Street and Chaplin Road.

Is this an example of illiteracy or bloody-mindedness? Kindly give your answers in the comments.
Tidy Barton Hill

16/07/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Language, Politics

Yesterday, along with Kurt James, Bristol City Council’s co-ordinator for the Bristol Clean Streets campaign, and local resident Eric Green, I joined a group of volunteers from Tawfiq Mosque in Barton Hill (usually rendered as “Bart Nil” in the local vernacular. Ed.😉 ) for a community litter pick.

Starting at 10.30 in the morning, we split into 6 groups and tackled six different parts of the area for the next 2 hours, picking up litter and noting any larger, fly-tipped items for reporting later.

While picking, we did get passers-by thanking us for our efforts, but ultimately I’m sure all those taking part would prefer it if our fellow citizens didn’t mess the area up in the first place. 😀

It was a successful event and I was most encouraged by the cheerful enthusiasm and commitment of those involved. The photo below shows just some of the stuff we collected.

Some of the litter picked up assembled at the Urban Park collection point.

Your correspondent understands the mosque plans to make this a regular event. If so, I’ll try and get along again to assist.

In the meantime, if you spot a problem on a Bristol street, be it an abandoned vehicle, litter, fly-tipping, a blocked drain or anything else, please report it to the council for attention.
Better news for a Tidy BS5

25/05/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Following on from the last rather gloomy post on residents’ efforts to get Bristol’s Easton and Lawrence Hill wards (roughly covered by the BS5 postcode. Ed.) tidier, some more positive news has been received from Up Our Street.

Celia, the community engagement officer, has emailed to report on a meeting she organised with some traders on Stapleton Road and commercial waste contractors earlier this week.

She writes:

It was a lively meeting, but some progress I think was made, and SUEZ, Bristol Waste and Biffa are going to visit their clients on the road to encourage people to move away from large bins on the highway to sack collection. Most traders seemed to agree that removal of the bins would help by taking away the focal points which attract so much dumping. Bristol City Council are going to have two additional enforcement officers working in the area soon, with a focus on collecting evidence so hopefully this will increase the speed and number of enforcement actions against illegal waste dumping.

Additional enforcement is coming to Nicholas Road and the rest of Easton & Lawrence Hill

Getting traders to stop using the 1280-litre Eurobins (also known by some as skip bins. Ed.) would be great news, besides which additional enforcement from the city council will also be welcome. It might just help to break the back of the fly-tipping problem. However, one has to ask what’s being done about education and encouragement, the 2 other words beginning with an “e mentioned in my previous post.

There’s nothing on education measures in Celia’s email but there is some encouraging news on other matters.

Celia continues:

Another area of progress was that we got our first two businesses to sign the Tidy BS5 Pledge! Tovey’s Seafood and First Choice Florists. I think it would be timely to visit all businesses on Stapleton Road inviting them to sign the pledge.

Finally, Up Our Street, local residents and Easton councillor Afzal Shah, amongst others, are also working on a motion to be presented to Bristol City Council for a cumulative impact area*. This would amongst other things stop planning permissions for new hot food takeaways of which both wards already have plenty and which are a major source of litter (not to mention food for the local gull and rat population. Ed.). Celia concludes by noting this proposals was also supported at the meeting with local traders.

* – Bristol currently has 5 cumulative impact areas covering the city centre, Gloucester Road, Whiteladies Road and Southville and Bedminster areas.
Recognition

12/04/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Media, Oddities, Politics

On Tuesday March 21st, your correspondent had a special appointment to keep up at the Mansion House in Clifton, the official residence of the Lord Mayor of Bristol.

The occasion was the presentation of Lord Mayor’s Medals to what Jeff Lovell, the current Lord Mayor, described in his opening remarks as “community champions”.

Only some 20 medals are awarded each year and your ‘umble scribe was a recipient this year.

Receiving the medal from the Lord Mayor. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street

According to the citation, I was commended for my work in the voluntary and community sector in East Bristol, including all the Tidy BS5 efforts to make Easton and Lawrence Hill a cleaner, more pleasant environment.

However, I was not the only recipient with a BS5 postcode. Three other locals received recognition.

Hannah Crudgington was recognised for her work for Tidy BS5 (particularly her videos. Ed.) and her efforts to show a more positive side to Easton than is generally given by the local media.

Bruce Yates was commended for his work in turning around local youth organisation Baggator at The Pickle Factory in All Hallows Road, as well as his work for RADE Bristol, which campaigns for inner-city clean air and against efforts to install polluting standby electricity generating plant in the city.

Last but not least, Amy Harrison received a medal for her work for Up Our Street.

All four of us are shown in the photograph below.

The BS5 recipients of the Lord Mayor’s Medal. Picture courtesy of Up Our Street.

It was, all told, a lovely afternoon, which was made even more special by a surprise visit by my eldest niece Katherine and boyfriend Martyn, who were subsequently treated to a night on the tiles in Easton.
GB Spring Clean weekend in Bristol

06/03/2017 Steve WoodsBristol, Politics

Last weekend was the highlight of the Great British Spring Clean campaign when Brits were exhorted to go out and do their bit to tidy up the UK.

Bristol did its part, needless to say with the campaign dovetailing neatly into Mayor Marvin Rees’ Bristol Clean Streets campaign, for which he’s has made a pledge that Bristol will be measurably cleaner by 2020.

Marvin launched the Great British Spring Clean weekend in Bristol by returning to his old school in Easton.

Marvin Rees on Stapleton Road with children from Hannah More Primary School, plus Tracey Morgan, CEO of Bristol Waste and Kurt James, Bristol Clean Streets lead officer. Picture credit: Bristol City Council.

Litter picks were organised all over the city in both (so-called) deprived areas and prosperous communities alike, from Lockleaze to leafy and well-to-do Stockwood. It seems that litter is a problem with no class distinctions.

Needless to say the Tidy BS5 volunteers were out as well, getting their hands dirty. Two were spotted doing their own impromptu litter pick in Easton’s All Hallows Road, whilst there was a more premeditated litter pick of Owen Square Park organised by Up Our Street as part of the Love Your Community day at next-door Easton Community Centre.

In addition, Tidy BS5 also organised a stall on Lawrence Hill, near the entrance to Lidl. Leaflets featuring a residents’ pledge (along the lines of “I will do my bit to keep BS5 tidy” Ed.) were handed out to Saturday morning shoppers, mainly as a means to get them giving their views on the general state of the area. The photo below shows Hannah and Anthea on the stall, which also comprised daffodils which were handed out as a thank-you to all who stopped by.

Finally, there was also some public service grafitti on the footways of Easton for the Great British Spring Clean campaign. Did it survive long enough in the weekend rain to get the message across?
Reuse Festival in Easton next month

19/09/2016 Steve WoodsBristol
Provisional planning is underway for a reuse festival to be held in east Bristol on Saturday, 29th October.

The festival will take place around the St Marks Road area of Easton. The organisers are hoping space can be made available either at St Mark’s Baptist Church, the mosque in St Mark’s Road and Mivart Street Studios.

The provisional programme of activities is as follows:
- Jumble trail (definite);
- Repair café (possible);
- Food swap (possible);
- Other activities (to be confirmed) by Litterarti, Tidy BS5, Up Our Street, Bristol Waste and the St Mark’s Road business community.
Further details will be posted here as and when received.

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