Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Street sweepers axed ?
I was told by a street sweeper on my road this morning that Haringey have axed 40 Veolia street sweepers this year, with another 15 jobs to go next year. No wonder our pavements are a sea of filth and people are complaining of more rat infestations. Does anyone know how I can verify this information, and what we can do about it?
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by pamish on
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It will be Veolia that decides how many people to employ, not LBH. They just have criteria to meet as set by LBH. We're one step removed from being able to influence their decisions via elected councillors.
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Permalink Reply by Lauren on
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Ok, but the sweeper I spoke to said it was because Haringey had cut the budget... so if they set the budget they decide how many sweepers we get. If Veolia get less money from them, they employ fewer sweepers. It’s still the Council making the cuts. Are we not paying the same? If that’s the case, where is the money going? Where do the councillors live? Aren’t they seeing this filth on the streets? Why do I have to report it every morning? Why aren’t they doing anything about it? The same street sweeper told me we have gone from weekly sweeps to monthly to now they just come out when they get complaints.
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Permalink Reply by matt on
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Lauren, was the sweeper a slim white English bloke, wearing a Unison badge ... by any chance? Think he likes to embellish his take on the situation but yes, in general what I've heard is the contract was renegotiated down by £2 million so of course this will end up affecting service at street level.
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I didn’t see a Unison badge. I was quite probing with my questions as I wanted to get to the bottom of why the rubbish on my road is such a problem. I was very pleased that he wanted to discuss it with me and he was happy to talk about it. If the budget has been cut by 2m then it doesn’t sound like much embellishment is needed. You only have to walk down Pemberton Rd to see the state it is in every morning and the amount of rubbish there is. It’s depressing and I feel ashamed to live here. I am looking for somewhere else to live after 22 years in the area so I don’t know why I’m even bothering to report it because nobody seems to care, but it seems wrong to just ignore it.
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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I walked down Bury Road yesterday (the one that runs parallel to Wood Green High Road to the east) and that seems another Uber piss bottle hot spot. It must be the filthiest road in the entire borough. Not only litter everywhere but skip loads of mattresses, furniture, building rubble - you name it. At lot of it seemed pretty old as there were weeds growing through it. I used the Haringey app to report stuff about half a dozen times in 10 minutes before I gave up. If Haringey can’t tackle what is obviously a real hot spot like this, what hope do the rest of us have.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Michael, I'm unsure how a worst-of-the-worst-competition is going to take us towards finding solutions. Several years ago Liz Ixer posted the then official Government categories of filthiness, with photo examples. At the time her own road wasn't much of a shining example.
You may remember the vanished Community Volunteers scheme which seemed to hike up the standard. (As I recall, the scheme was abandoned, without explanation.)
I've also reported rubbish in Bury Road. Last May it seemed to be focussed in about three main spots with large piles of dumped bags. So I made a point of walking down the road and sending in photos, as it was a lot more than casual can tossing. It seems like you saw a similar pattern.
Frankly I'd be astonished if between them, the local residents, traders, residents' associations, street cleaners, Veolia managers, Haringey middle managers and Noel Park ward councillors weren't aware or the Bury Road problem and had various pieces of the "jigsaw" to at least partly solve this puzzle. Including a fairly clear set of ideas of what's actually going on.
By the way I'm not assuming it's only only one or two factors. Nor do I assume that no-one from the list above has tried various ways to tackle the problem. I'm sure they have. But as your own observations may suggest, whatever they've done hasn't worked well enough. Or if it has for a while, then the results have not "stuck" and been sustained.
What happens from here? Donald Rumsfeld's famous poem suggests a way forward.“There are known knowns,
things we know that we know;
and there are known unknowns,
things that we know we don't know.
But there are also unknown unknowns,
things we do not know we don't know.”
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Permalink Reply by Tessa on
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It’s the same all over. I live near AP. Every time I go out I pick up as many handfulls as I can of tins, bottles, sweet wrappers and put them in the nearest (private) dustbin. Otherwise, particularly after a concert at the Palace, local roads look like a rubbish tip. It’s human beings dropping the stuff as they walk along (or throwing it into my garden if they feel particularly energetic). If they didn’t choose to be so anti-social, we wouldn’t need the roads to be swept until autumn, and could spend the money on something more useful.
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I find on Pemberton Rd we are plagued by the minicab drivers throwing their bottles of urine and fast food containers out. If you walk up on the side of the school after dark you will see them sleeping in their cars so it seems to be a hotspot for them. Also towards the bottom by green lanes it’s the workmen who go and get a takeaway kebab and sit and eat it in their van, before throwing the wrappers out onto the street.
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Lauren, I suggest you write to Cllr Peray Ahmet who is the "cabinet" councillor with this remit.
peray.ahmet@haringey.gov.uk
Ask her to look at this thread and give her any extra details of what you've seen, dates, locations and anything else you think may be helpful.
One of the current problems appears to be reductions - over several years - of enforcement staff who might be able to investigate and deal with the some of the particular problems you identify.
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