Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
Cost of Garden Waste Collections Nationally
This was on the BBC web site earlier and I thought it was interesting.
Take aways include:
- Cost of Garden waste collections charged to residents nationally is around £74m
- Something like half of local authorities are now charging residents for green waste collection
- Average costs in any one area is £42.40 per annum (vs £75 for a large brown bin and £55 for a smaller brown bin in Haringey)
- Lowest are £18/yr in Momouthshire and £22/yr in Richmond
- Highest are £96/yr in Harlow and £86 in Arun (W.Sussex)
I think that puts Haringey at the upper end of the cost bracket.
I cannot remember how much Haringey were targeting to earn form this, was it £1-2m/pa? Anyone remember? I would be curious to know if they have met their target and if they have made this viable (ie, the income is sufficient to run this without the need for subsidy from Haringey or there being a net cost)
Tags for Forum Posts: garden waste collections
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Liz on
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You clearly haven’t tried to “get involved” or “give a view” except as a party member - it’s not for the faint hearted, especially if, like me, you prefer not to toe a Party line of any colour. Given some of the crap I’ve taken, I really don’t blame people if they prefer not to put themselves in the firing line and also, you know, they have jobs, lives, problems, kids, other priorities.
It’s not unreasonable to assume that the person who made all those promises before the election would see their way to keeping some of them without having to be asked every week. Otherwise what’s the point of believing them when they come ‘a knocking’ for your vote every 4 years. I don’t want to project manage elected officials. I want them to do their job. My verdict on that will be at the ballot box but while people continue to vote in local elections on national issues (a fact shamelessly exploited). I guess my principled voting stance will be a lonely one.
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Permalink Reply by Chris Setz on
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>>You clearly haven’t tried to “get involved” or “give a view” except as a party member
You forget that I spent years trying to get a better outcome for Hornsey Town Hall, starting in 2003\4 at the height of the community pressure by opening it for London Open house and guiding people around, showing them how wonderful a resource it was. Founded and help run the HTH FB group.
I'm clearly more cynical than you in that I don't expect Cllrs to keep their promises. However, having spent time with many of them over the years, I really don't think the problem lies with them, they're predictable. If numbers of us demanded something, we'd get it, it's just that, largely, we don't.
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The point being you joined a strong collective of people who no doubt had the time, resources, and strong drive to achieve a clear purpose.
I’m all for collective action but that’s not always possible to achieve.
Predictable, mendacious councillors? And we wonder why voter turnout is low?
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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"Where views are expressed on HoL, very few praise the Council yet many criticise"
Chris, it's also worth bearing in mind that the views a person expresses on the Council on a forum like HoL don't necessarily equate with the totality of their views.
Where the Council is concerned I've always thought that sites like HoL act a pressure valve and therefore are much more likely to be used for airing frustrations than meting out praise. Having said that, there isn't a complete absence of voices who speak up for the Council when it is unfairly criticised.
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Good point Hugh and of course I factor that in - HoL is not a confessional :)
There have been some very strong posts describing Cllrs as history's greatest monsters that go uncontradicted.
Still use it as a bellweather though so, steam-letting aside, do you agree that the balance of opinion of HoLers about the Council are negative or is the respect fairly expressed?
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Permalink Reply by John McMullan on
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Tosh. Links please Chris. History's greatest monsters indeed!
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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Ok some facts Chris. One of the bits of work I did a few years ago was being involved in benchmarking club with 15 London local authorities. This included Haringey. I and colleagues carried out mystery shopping at 10 different public access points posing as customers in every borough. All asking the same questions of the same service. In every case Haringey came in the bottom quartile of performance. The aim of the exercise was to learn not to damn so we came back a year later to see what had improved. In Haringey we found nothing had changed. For me the message I got was the mediocre was fine.
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We're at cross purposes, Michael. I'm not saying the Council isn't faulty, I'm saying what needs to change?
The 2018 Council might be a lot better (or worse) than it's predecessor. Haringey may or may not appear in more top quartiles then previously.
What I'd like is for people to accept that we really can change it and that by not being as active as we could be, we should accept that responsibility for shortfall lies with us. It seems to me that most people want it both ways - they want to complain that the Council is incompetent but don't themselves want to do much about it.
If in fact more people getting involved won't make any significant difference then I'm wrong.
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Are you aware of League Tables published anywhere publicly that give a fair impression of how good/bad our Council is? Or methods that can put those figures into context? Anything most people could believe and thus could use as a benchmark?
Islington is much worse on amount of green space per person but that's not easy to lay at the Councils' door. A lot of league tables I've seen seem like this to me - extenuating circumstances. I've also noticed people blame the Council for things that, for instance, are down to TfL and have nothing to do with the Council. By contrast, most people seem to love the place they live in when others might not be able to see why :)
People don't often seem to evaluate Councils holistically - they take Veolia's performance here as if Veolia were only here and not all over the UK for instance.
I don't think there can be much of a satisfying comparison, it's like comparing Cornwall and Devon - they're different places, with different people and hence priorities. Only a subset of measures can be applied to them and that subset won't be the same as that applied to London Councils etc.
Are you of the opinion that there is something about Labour that makes Haringey perform poorly in areas it could do a lot better in?
Or is it something about Haringey Labour? Or is it that the 'inner core' of long-standing Council Officers embedded in the Civic Centre have grown a culture that causes it? Or some other cause?
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Firstly the work I did with colleagues wasn’t about numerical comparison, it was about the experience of accessing services. It was walking into receptions and asking for things, phoning for help and advice, presenting them with problems they are there to solve. It wasn’t tick box. It took many hours and involved interacting with (in my case) 70 different members of council staff. A number were good and really tried their best. Many didn’t. The comparator boroughs were demographically very similar so Hackney, Islington, Camden, Brent and Southwark were part of the group. The people who did the exercise were all employed in local authorities - who incidentally did the work in their own time - including people who worked in the services they were accessing so understood what could and couldn’t be done.
On being active in the borough, I am and so are others I know are active here on HoL. I and they have taken part in consultations, knocked on neighbours doors and sat through meetings with council staff and councillors. Some of the people on HoL reading your post have organised, publicised and agitated. My experience is that little if any change has come out of that.
My own view is that there is a mindset in Haringey that doesn’t want to listen and doesn’t want to act. People I have worked with who have taken jobs in Haringey have commented that it was like stepping back 30 years into an old fashioned place where, to quote one, the people get in the way of you doing your job.
I sincerely hope that the new administration get to grips with this and actually has a council that is responsive to what people need. That’s why I voted for them.
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Thanks Michael, really appreciate your authentic, objective take on the situation.
I see Yes Minister as a documentary :)
The CEO is responsible for imposing the 'culture' you identify as rotten. I find it hard to believe that it can survive the mass redundancies seen recently but if you're right and it has, then the cause must be easy to spot, mustn't it? It has to be those in power who have remained for over a decade. Anyone who remains in a time of savage sackings must be regarded as indispensable. That 'old guard' must be the ones responsible for the culture.
I'd like to see us first agree on what measures ought to be in place, otherwise progress becomes a matter of opinion. You don't seem able to point to detailed, objective measures publicly available that can show us just how good we are. By some measures we're top but people seem determined to hold to one consistent view of our Council (incompetent) and apply it to every aspect.
Unless we can agree on the facts, we lose. It seems to me that government actively tries to shape situations to reduce everything to a matter of opinion, cynically knowing that, as we're all so divided, we depend on them to decide for us - that's what they're there for. Then they engineer it so that an 'objective' decision is made by Officers relying on professional competence - hey presto the politics has 'disappeared'. Residents don't seem to realise that this is how power is - a huge amount of decision-making residents think 'the council' is responsible for has been taken away from Cllrs - it's statutory. So Central Government does the damage and local government gets the blame.
So if everything is reduced to a matter of opinion we're there to feed them input. That'd be fine if they always made the best decisions.
It's this decisiveness that I see at the heart of our problems. I think those with power here see themselves as 'custodians' of precious Borough resources that need to survive this Cllr or that Cllr (as Cllrs come and go) and this protest and that protest (as protests so often peter out).
So the Cllrs (and Officers who they hand power over to) claim to 'listen' so as to decide. As if they had the wisdom of Solomon when in fact everything is connected and it's impossible to avoid unintended consequences. They often make terrible decisions, sometimes so obviously crazy it amazes.
The only difference from yesterday is what is modern? We could have officers here on HoL, that would be new. We could have voting on individual issues, that would be new etc. etc.
The only legitimacy I believe in is people power. And yet the people do not act in enough numbers. That's my beef.
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Permalink Reply by JJ B on
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Please allow me to politely say to you..."what utter tosh!"
Can you go and tell that to the campaigners at Wards Corner and those of us opposed to the programmed destructive 'regeneration' at Tottenham Hotspurs Football ground in North Tottenaham.
Until quite recently Haringey Council showed many, many, signs of ineptitude and corruption and sometines just downright incompetence. That doesn't mean that most of the staff weren't trying their best, individually.
Yes, there are reasons to explain all of that but it doesn't remove the observation.
Granted that the 'regime' in Haringey has changed ad we can only hope that they at the very least will improve the 'culture' and the prospects for our communities. But please your condescending tone is really too much so.
Angrily signed.
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I'm sorry to have offended JJ B - not my intention. I'm asking for more protest not less :)
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