Mike Causey – Wrecclesham and Rowledge
Waverley Borough CouncillorArchive for Waste / Recycling
ALERT: Waste and Recycling
UPDATE for Waverley Residents:
Waverley’s collections of waste and recycling have been cancelled until further notice. The advice is that householders should leave their wheelie bin at the kerbside so that catch-up collections can be made once road and pavement conditions have improved. The recycling service will resume as normal from the week beginning 13 December. If you’ve lost track of whether this will be a refuse or recycling week please visit http://www.waverley.gov.uk/site/scripts/documents_info.php?documentID=162&pageNumber=1
Please do help to communicate this message by passing it on to family and friends who live in the borough. The latest updates on services and snow news can be found at www.waverley.gov.uk.
Thank you
Julie Jackson
Communications
Mindless Thugs
My utter anger and exasperation towards mindless thugs is on a high right now, following an email about vandalism toward various vehicles belonging to Veolia that collect our refuse and recycling in Waverley:
Dear Councillors,
I am sorry to have to report that there have been severe delays to the refuse and recycling service today.
This is as a result of a break-in at Veolia’s Farnham depot over the weekend, where the batteries from the majority of the refuse trucks were stolen, with resulting damage caused to many of the vehicles. The police have been involved in this matter, but due to the time taken to repair the vehicles (in most cases the batteries were ‘cut’ off rather than cleanly removed), there will be a backlog of work at the end of today.
Veolia have managed to complete 6 rounds today, including the day’s scheduled garden waste collections, however, several rounds have not been started. The main areas affected have been-
Shamley Green
Wonersh
Godalming
Farncombe
Elstead
Weybourne
Heath End.
It is expected that refuse collections will be up to date by the end of tomorrow (Tuesday 30th March) as the contractor has arranged for extra vehicles to help catch up with today’s work. However, for recycling it is likely to take until the end of the week to catch up completely. Veolia will be carrying out scheduled work as a priority, and then catching up with today’s work at the end of each day. This will ensure minimum impact to residents.
A notice has been placed on the website to advise visitors of the delays.
Regards
Rob Anderton
Head of Environmental Services
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
Quandry
7.30 am – Caleb and I spy a fox from the bedroom window. It was digging into the snow about a metre away from our chicken coop. After momentarily sharing Caleb’s delight at seeing some wildlife up close, I’m then greatly relieved that it gives up and goes away. Foxes are a nuisance.
11.30 am – I’m pondering the large number of emails about waste collections (or rather a lack of) that have cluttered my Inbox. It would appear that the problem of uncollected waste is widespread and getting to be a hazard.
5.00 pm – Further emails, including an official Waverley update. Veolia are at the four collection points (as posted on this blog a few days ago) each morning from 9 to 12.
9.30 pm – Have finished reading a agitated exchange of emails regarding the state of waste collection in the borough. Councillors of all persuasions are lobbying hard for innovative ways of clearing the backlog of bins which are now overflowing and, inevitably becoming a health hazard. Other councillors are defending Veolia and ongoing efforts.
9.45 pm – Fill the car boot with rubbish bags so that my wife can drop them off at Sainsbury’s, Water Lane, tomorrow morning.
9.46 pm – Realise my quandry – leave the bins overflowing and the foxes have a food source. Empty them and it’s more likely they will go after our chickens. Hmm…
