Harringay, Haringey - So Good they Spelt it Twice!
'NO' to Ending free bulky waste collections and closing the recycling centre
Haringey's current budget proposals will see the end of free bulky and green waste collections and the closure of one of the recycling centres.
These changes are likely to spell real trouble in this borough. It will inevitably lead to a significant increase in dumping with the poorest areas being hardest hit.
Research has shown that introducing a charge can lead to a drop in demand for collections of 50-75% on previous levels. Fly-tipping will increase as a result.
An alternative approach to introducing a collection charge would be to limit or reduce the number of items accepted for free, and/or the number of free collections allowed per year.
An alternative to closing the recycling centre would be to control who uses the centre and make a small charge as appropriate.
The cabinet meets to decide on this issue in two weeks' time. Whilst the consultation is now closed you can still email the cabinet member responsible (peray.ahmet@haringey.gov.uk) and copy your councillor.
Budget proposals: http://www.haringey.gov.uk/local-democracy/policies-and-strategies/...
Survey (CLOSED 22 JAN): http://www.haringey.gov.uk/survey/budget-2017-18
Tags for Forum Posts: rubbish, waste collection, waste collection charges
Replies to This Discussion
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Permalink Reply by Antoinette on
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Every single Council employee has the Report It app on their phones and they do report fly-tipping and dumped rubbish and broken pavements. Planning enforcement is a highly specialised and complex field so perhaps not appropriate for your average traffic warden to be in charge of.
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Sorry but you have completely missed the point.
Create a cadre of wardens who DO have the power and the SKILLS needed to go around the place to carry out the work.
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JJB...if you create a cadre of wardens with all the powers and skills you mention, you're going to have to pay them accordingly. Your plan would double costs not reduce them. A planning officer costs double what a traffic warden does. That's why it makes perfect sense to separate out the less skilled work from the skilled work and to pay for those roles at different rates.
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Permalink Reply by Ian on
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I agree jj B, we need a new approach and its called the will of the people. To the councils it is not absurd or surreal to create processes to make as much money as possible from us dressed up as doing a civic service. Its all about dipping back into our pockets to extract more cash and people know it, hence the continuous break down of trust in the systems that are supposed to be there for the people. With Internetrification of society it is technically viable with participation of the people to bypass governments and councils and create platforms where the will and ideas of the people can be expressed. With funding and the platform of the internet we the people can voice and bring in change, neutral of political party alliance. Just imagine having a referendum on an issue organised by the people for the people with full participation. The political parties would have to listen and we would not have to listen to dodgy polls conducted by 3rd parties anymore as such a platform would be the word of the people. The barrier to such a solution at present to represent the views of the people, neutral of political affiliation is MONEY and PARTICIPATION. More or even full participation can come in time when the generation old/none computerised are gone and a new society consisting of dissatisfied people that are 100% computerised are in place. Money would be needed to create such a system with party neutral people working within it independent of government. This would be a fearful and disruptive system to politics as we know it. It is not a system any of the parties would endorse as it gives power to people and take away from themselves.
The problem we see today with western voting systems is that you have to comply with existing party politics and be an insider or have the money of a Sultan like Trump to even stand a chance of winning. With politics as it is now in the UK there are no room for outsiders and the voice of the people is rarely heard. So you need to be sent to Cambridge, Oxford etc and be groomed for political elitism one day or in the case of trump financially elite in order to be an opposition to the political status quo.
We need to look at radical change and the voice of the people injected into the schemes supposedly implemented for us otherwise we will "forever be tinkering around the edges" of change. Now if I had Millions or billions I would be implementing such a system for the people that would become self funding with contribution from the people in time as results are delivered and the platform is proven to bring the word of the people into action that would otherwise not be possible. Big idea but we live in a big society with big problems.
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Permalink Reply by Hugh on
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Antoinette, many residents have the 'Report it' app too and I suspect that the majority of reports are made by residents. I could of course find out, but, as you'll no doubt appreciate, the FOI it would need might not be worth time time it would take to execute.
Ian, an immediate way you can make the voice of the people heard is by downloading the 'Love Clean Streets' app and get reporting. That will make a difference whilst participative democracy is being reshaped.
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Actually until very recently we've had a perfectly serviceable system which has been flagged up on this site many times.
Parking enforcement and other street enforcement has traditionally been separate. I suspect the primary reason for this is that one is a revenue raising activity the other is not.
Parking enforcement has always been VERY effective (some might say overly effective).
Other street enforcement has been handled by the Neighbourhood Action Team for the past few years. Before the it had another name that I can't remember now. The Neighbourhood Action Team's duties were:
- Waste contract monitoring and management (monitoring and finding solutions to waste, litter and dumping issues
- Street enforcement (street trading, skips etc)
- Highways maintenance (working with the highways contractor to ensure that roads are repaired, maintained and inspected)
However, along with the changes that this post focusses on, the NAT team is being slimmed down to a shadow of its former self.
I noticed that the Council web page about the team has yet to be updated even though some of the staff it lists are already gone. For posterity I have copied it and attach it below in a pdf.
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Nat.pdf, 66 KB
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Yes, I'd appreciate it if you didn't submit an FOI request about it! I can tell you that as you only need an email address to register for the app, the system will not differentiate between reports made by residents, non-residents, businesses or Council staff. I was just really trying to demonstrate that Council staff are not egits who would walk past a fly tip and not report it.
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Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on
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Thanks Hugh. I was pleased to read that:
"Every single Council employee has the Report It app on their phones and they do report fly-tipping and dumped rubbish and broken pavements."
If accurate this is excellent news. But is there any evidence to support such an assumption?
Even if that's the case, based on my own experience, it appears unlikely to me that many if not all council staff will as a rule report 'streetscene' problems as they move round the borough.To be fair to them, one fairly obvious reason is the time constraint.
Stopping even for under a minute to take a photo of dumped rubbish, graffiti, potholes etc adds considerably to the time it takes me to walk in any direction from my home. And that's just point-n-click. (Reporting I do later from my computer at home. That's my own choice, of course.)
By the way, I still prefer FixMyStreet website. I'd be interested to hear the view of other people who've compared the Council's app with Love Clean Streets.
Lastly, thanks for posting the historic list of Neighbourhood Action staff. Maybe one day our future councillors will look back and wonder why those running the show in 2017 wasted millions on enriching lawyers and consultants to dream up gargantuan, risky, stupid and damaging "regeneration" & "development" schemes, while neglecting the basics like keeping the streets clean. -
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Permalink Reply by Michael Anderson on
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While there may be scope for giving more powers to civil enforcement staff I would be wary about planning enforcement coming under them. Planning enforcement officers are qualified planners and the deliberate flouting of planning regulations can be a criminal matter (the famous Mr Fiddler who built a house concealed behind hay bales is a case in point). Getting in wrong in planning enforcement can place the local authority in huge jeopardy, both legally and financially.
The main problem though is the sheer number of bodies out on the street that would be needed to expand civil enforcement work.
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Permalink Reply by JoeW on
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This is what happens if the people responsible for enforcement are not suitably qualified:
(copyright A. Stanton)
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About the primary school: rolled up in my polluting (but not much) small car just before school was out one afternoon. Gridlock from all the badly parked cars doing the school run leaving insufficient road width for a medium-size van, never mind HGVs delivering to warehouses along there. High-grade aversion therapy though.
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