Monday, January 18, 2010

Rubbish collections.

On Wednesday the 13th out went the normal bin for it's fortnightly collection and there it stayed unemptied until I got back. Okay at the time the side-roads were still slushy and slippery so fair enough, but when were they going to be collected?

I logged on to the District Council's newly designed website (the one that's broken my archive links) and checked out the news - nothing. I used the Popular links to go straight to Waste and Recycling and found it hadn't been reviewed since the 4th.

I've just visited and there's a flashing alert at the top of the news section linking to Refuse and recycling collections service still disrupted posted on the 15th just past noon.

Where refuse collections are not made on the due date, residents are asked to put their bins out again at the normal collection point until the collection is made.
Luckily judging by my neighbour's still full bin I didn't miss them Thursday or Friday, but how much would it take for the council to knock out some quick and basic leaflets (or even something in the Shuttle) along the lines of 'If your bins were scheduled for collection on [date] they'll be picked up on [date]'? Instead we've got streets lined with bins as no-one takes them in in fear that that'll be the point when they come to collect them.

I acknowledge the difficulties we've all been going through them, but the difference is you're paid by us to do this and if you can't we need to get some feedback from you as to what's going on.

4 comments:

Orphi said...

MK has the exact same thing. The street spent about a week lined with refuse. They sent round a leaflet telling us when the collections would be over the holiday period, but apparently they weren't expecting snow, so the collection did not happen on the appointed date. Then another date was appointed (I'm not sure how my mum knows this), and nothing happened on that day either. Still, the next day the problem was fixed, so… yay?

On the other hand, I didn't try the council website. (Nah, I don't even know if they have one. I've never looked.)

FlipC said...

I think it's one of those expected things now that every council has a website, whether they bother to update it readily or not is a whole other matter.

I expect they'll be round Wednesday, but I don't know that so out goes the bin every morning and stays there all day, which is what the councils keep telling you not to do or they'll talk about bringing in fines.

As I said things happen, but we should be told. How would anyone feel if they'd be sat around all day waiting for, say, the Sky engineer to turn up only to be told at the end of the day they'd cancelled and rescheduled for 'some other time this week or possibly next week'?

Orphi said...

…ah, so you've delt with Sky before then? :-D

I read some while back about a politician talking about bringing in a law where every website will be rated for content, to protect children online. Because of course, this is a completely feasible proposition, right?

In other words, politicians don't understand the Internet. (Or they do, but they're hoping the voters don't. I can't decide which.) I wonder if councils understand the Internet any better?

FlipC said...

In theory they could pass a law that forces every UK host to make their clients use the existing rating tags, except it'd have to be self-assessed and won't apply to anything outside the UK. Just like any other measure they try to pass.

As for councils no, no really. I'm trying to remember if it was myself or Tav who wondered why they couldn't video record every council meeting and make it public. Storage is a non-issue today and a decent web-camera with a omni-directional mike ain't costly. I mean it's not as if we need Hollywood standards, just the ability to see who said what and how the meeting was conducted.

Sure the figures will most likely be lower than that for BBC Parliament, but the point is it's there if you want to watch it.