Mike Causey – Wrecclesham and Rowledge
Waverley Borough CouncillorArchive for Environment
Cleaner Neighbourhood
It’s with delight that I can report a ‘Community Clean Up Day’ in Wrecclesham at the end of the month. Following a successful event in the Farncombe area, the Waverley tenant involvement officers have arranged for a similar event to occur on Saturday 30th October. I’ve given full details below, but you can contact Kate Douglas at the council offices if you have any questions or if you’re able to help on the day!
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On Saturday 30th October there will be an opportunity to get rid of unwanted household items for residents living in Greenfield Road, Beldham Road, Cobbetts Way, Rural Close and Weavers Gardens and a selection of other roads in the area which have Waverley properties.
What can be collected?
Contractors will collect up to 5 large objects plus any electrical / white goods that you do not want. The electrical and white goods will be recycled.
How do I book a collection?
You must book a collection in advance. Either telephone Kate Douglas at Waverley Borough Council on 07909871633 or email kate.douglas@waverley.gov.uk Alternatively, return the form attached to this letter indicating which items you want collected. Please let Kate know no later than Saturday 23rd October. We cannot collect items if you do not contact us.
What do I need to do on the day?
Everything needs to be outside your front door by 9.00am on Saturday 30th October. Our contractors will be collecting from 9.00am onwards on that day. We cannot guarantee a time for collection. Depending on demand, it could be into the afternoon before your items are taken. Different items will be picked up at different times – so please don’t worry if all items are not removed all at once. If you need help removing items from your house please let us know.
What else is happening?
We hope that all of you will take part in the clean up and help with a litter pick. There will also be a gazebo and bouncy castle with refreshments at the community centre.
How can I help?
We would like as many people as possible to give up an hour or two to join our volunteers on the 30th to help with the litter pick – we are meeting at the community centre where there will be a bouncy castle for the morning. Refreshments will be available for all our volunteers. Please come along and help if you have time.
Proud to be BP? Still? Yes.
The ongoing leak in the Gulf of Mexico is horrendous and I feel it in the pit of my stomach every time I see or read the news. But, I continue to be proud to be BP. Why? Because the way in which the company is handling the clean-up of an accident that lies with the company it trusted to operate a drilling rig for it, is demonstrably the action of a company that absolutely wants to do the right thing and prevent whatever damage it can.
It’s easy to throw accusations and imagine a shadowy corporate world of deal and counter-deal, but the reality is at the opposite end of the spectrum. The reality is of thousands of BP employees working their socks off to counter this horrible threat to the life of many more thousands of families on the Louisiana coast and beyond.
Yes, we all wish this had never happened. Yes, we will learn from the mistakes. And yes, we are looking for ways to avoid this unlikely yet high impact risk of drilling for oil. Hence, moving to a world where reliance on oil diminishes has been an objective of BP for over a decade now and our Alternative Energy business unit is working hard to make that possible.
We’ll keep working.
Snow: Have Your Say
Next Wednesday 24th March, at 7 pm, there will be a Joint Overview & Scrutiny meeting. It’s specific purpose is to review the response of the council to the unprecedented weather conditions earlier this year which resulted in terribly difficult travel conditions and severely impacted Waverley’s ability to deliver services.
I write this, as I’d like to invite readers / residents to attend the meeting next week: at the beginning of the meeting their is always time for members of the public to ask questions, and then to stay and listen to the debate. I know, I know: this can seem fruitless and frustrating: simply asking the question and the not being able to contribute to the rest of the evening’s debate is not ideal, but, if members of the public were more frequent in their attendance, more pertinent in their questions, and more vocal in their thoughts on these matters, councillors could not claim to be ignorant of the prevailing opinion on any particular matter and thus be more likely to respond swiftly and appropriately.
The links below are to the timeline of events and the council report that are on the agenda for next week.
Please let me know if you need any help in submitting a question, or downloading these reports. I had a good number of emails from residents on this matter and a high number of visits to my blog for information on services during the bad weather, so I hope that this meeting will see some public attendance.
LATEST: Environmental Services Update
Dear All
Although the snow has (for now) disappeared, we will, for the next two weeks be in ‘catch-up’ mode following the pre and post Christmas weather and the Christmas break. I therefore felt it would be useful over the coming week or so to continue to keep you updated on our latest position with refuse and recycling collections.
As I advised you last week, we resumed a normal service from Monday morning, and are now following the 2010 calendar . We had a good day yesterday and, with the help of 10 additional vehicles and the associated operatives, we managed to carry out all scheduled recycling and refuse collections as per the schedule.
Today unfortunately, despite the fact that we have managed to negotiate extended opening hours at SCC’s transfer station at Slyfield, the queues have again built up throughout the day, and we have encountered waiting times of up to 1.5 hours at times. This has meant that we have not been able to complete all of today’s scheduled routes. We have raised our concerns over this situation with SCC and have asked them to look at what they can do to make things run more smoothly over the coming days (although it should be acknowledged, of course, they are having to deal with a considerably larger volume of waste from us, as well as Guildford and Woking, this week). In the meantime Veolia have proposed that a further 2 vehicles are deployed tomorrow morning to facilitate a swift catch-up of all properties missed as a result of today’s delays. Of course, if we encounter similar delays tomorrow and into the latter part of the week, the backlog will grow, and we have a meeting scheduled with Veolia tomorrow afternoon, at which we will look at how best to tackle this should it arise. I will keep you updated on our plans as the situation unfolds, and can assure you that we will do everything we can to keep any delays to a minimum.
If you have any comments or questions on the above, please do let me know. Otherwise I will be in touch with a further update at the same time tomorrow.
Regards
Rob Anderton
Acting Head of Environmental Services
Waverley Borough Council
LATEST: Environmental Services Update
Dear Councillors
Conditions have improved significantly since I wrote to you yesterday, and we are now optimistic that (provided nothing changes over the weekend) we will be able to resume a normal refuse and recycling service, including garden waste collections, from Monday morning.
In the meantime, we were able to again provide four temporary refuse collection points in Cranleigh, Farnham, Godalming and Haslemere this morning, and intend to do the same tomorrow.
Staff availability allowing, we also propose to provide a refuse and a recycling vehicle at Crown Court Car Park, Godalming, and a refuse vehicle at Fairground Car Park, Haslemere from 9am to 1pm on Saturday, alongside the scheduled green waste collection points at The Wharf Car Park and Fairground Car Park. Any Farnham or Cranleigh residents keen to dispose of waste or recycling will be directed to the Civic Amenity sites at Bourne Mill and Elmbridge Road respectively.
We have today emptied all accessible litter bins from the town centres, and we also managed to complete approximately 30% of today’s scheduled clinical waste collection round- the remaining routes still proving too icy . We hope to complete the remainder of today’s round, as well as tomorrow’s schedule, by the end of tomorrow.
Veolia will be deploying two refuse vehicles tomorrow to start collecting any refuse bins that we come across on selected ‘A’ and ‘B’ roads, depending upon accessibility. We are not going to be advertising the fact that we are doing this, as the collections will be scattered throughout the borough and we will not be bound by scheduled collection days. This will enable us to gain a head-start before we start following the published 2010 collection schedule next week.
In preparation for the resumption of normal services on Monday, Veolia will be visiting known difficult roads tomorrow to assess them for accessibility. Any potential issues will be highlighted, with the aim of looking at how we might overcome them, and getting to all properties due a collection on Monday.
Regards
Rob Anderton
Acting Head of Environmental Services
Waverley Borough Council
LATEST: Update on Waste / Recycling
Dear Councillors,
The heavy snow on Tuesday evening and Wednesday morning, and the subsequent sub-zero temperatures have meant that it has been impossible to carry out any refuse or recycling collections since Tuesday afternoon.
As you may be aware, more snow, and continuing icy conditions are forecast over the weekend, so it currently looks unlikely that any collections will be possible early next week either.
We are working closely with Veolia to put together a strategy to ensure that we can resume normal services as smoothly and efficiently as possible- but only once conditions are safe to do so- and I will update you on our latest thinking on this on Monday. In the meantime, we are keeping our webpages updated with any news, are advising all callers of the latest situation, and are reassuring them that when we do collect from their properties we will, of course take any additional waste they leave out.
Veolia intend, provided conditions do not deteriorate over the weekend, to spend Monday clearing their depot of snow to enable them to get their vehicles out. Once this has been done, we have arranged for them to take a number of refuse and recycling vehicles and post them at central locations in each of the main centres of population between 9am and 12 noon each morning next week from Tuesday onwards. This will provide a facility for any residents keen to dispose of any surplus refuse or recycling to do so if they wish, and will hopefully mean that there will be less excess to collect when we do resume normal operations. Again, this information will be posted on the internet and relayed to anyone calling for advice, as well as being advertised on-site from Monday onwards. The agreed locations are:
Tesco’s at Weyhill in Haslemere
Sainsbury’s in Water Lane, Farnham
Crown Court, Godalming
Village Way, Cranleigh
On a slightly separate note, I can advise that the street-cleaning operatives who have managed to get to work are currently working to clear the main town centre footways, car parks and sheltered housing sites of snow to complement the work being carried out by Surrey County Council on the road network.
If you have any questions or comments on the above, please do let me know.
Regards
Rob Anderton
Acting Head of Environmental Services
Waverley Borough Council
