Last week Brighton and Hove City Council apologised for the ‘terrible inconvenience’ caused to the city’s residents by late bin collections.
In an update that was released last Friday (17 August), the council said it, “recognises that there are a lot of missed collections taking place throughout the city at this time” and stated that the issues were mainly being caused by, “a temporary shortage of drivers and collectors due to annual leave and sudden sickness.”
The council also advised residents that they should ensure that all their rubbish is placed in bins correctly and separated properly.
The councils statement concluded by encouraging the public to visit the council’s website to receive information on collections, and the website was the best way to contact Cityclean to report missed collections, overflowing bins, or to request a street clean.
This apology comes after a series off tweets were posted in the last week by people in Brighton & Hove all with the same concern, that collections are being missed.
Subsequently these tweets have displayed the effects these missed bin collections have had on our city’s streets:
Dominic Dean on Twitter posted the above photo on his Twitter account on 14 August, and said: “Rubbish collection has disappeared from a whole section of Brighton these past few days and all the bins in the area are now looking like this example” He went on to tweet Brighton & Hove City Council the question: “do you know what’s going on?”
A day later on the 15 August, a photo was posted from the Twitter account, ‘BrightonBrummie’, that displayed the overflowing bin crisis on Blatchington Road, Hove. This photo can be seen below:
Local political campaigner, Alexandra Phillips, also posted a picture on Twitter that showed piles of rubbish and bottles spilling onto the pavements and roads in Brighton on Sunday.
Miss Phillips said: “Wading through the rubbish yesterday in #brighton.” She went on to add, “Am so embarrassed by the state of our City”.
Her picture is seen below:
Green Party councillor for Brunswick and Adelaide, Phélim Mac Cafferty, this week on Twitter highlighted reports of overflowing bins in Palmeira Avenue, and said: “Communal recycling bins the western length of Brunswick Place are overflowing and need emptying.” He called on Cityclean, the council’s refuse collection service, to take swift action to rectify the situation.
Councillor Cafferty also accused Brighton and Hove City Council’s Labour leadership of trying to distance itself from Cityclean’s failure to collect many residents’ rubbish on time, stating: ” yet more attempts from the Labour leadership of the council to distance themselves from the problem”.
And according to the Twitter account of GMB Trade Union in Sussex, the Union believes that “All political groups are responsible” for the city’s bin collection crisis.
The council have responded to the bin collection crisis, and the full Brighton and Hove City Council update reads:
“The council recognises there are a lot of missed collections taking place throughout the city at this time, and we apologise for the terrible inconvenience this is causing our residents and businesses.
“The problems are mainly being caused by a temporary shortage of drivers and collectors due to annual leave and sudden sickness.
“These kind of staff shortages are normally covered by agency staff, however even the agencies are finding it difficult to provide us with properly trained and qualified people.
“The staff we do have at present are working very hard to get things back to normal as soon as possible, and although we know it’s extremely frustrating, we ask for people to bear with us and we’ll resolve these issues.
“If your recycling was missed on the last collection day and is due this week, please ensure everything is correctly separated and placed kerbside.
“We update our website daily with information on collections, and the page also gives advice on the best ways to contact Cityclean, make complaints or inform us of missed collections, overflowing communal bins or to request a street clean.
“Please be assured that online forms that are sent to us via the website are passed directly to our operations team which then assigns crews and street cleansing operatives to the specific location.”
This statement follows a recent petition to the council about rubbish and recycling collections in Brighton and Hove, which ran in June and July.It was signed by over 750 people and will be presented to the environment, transport and sustainability committee meeting on October 9 for consideration.
Featured image via Alexandra Phillips Twitter account: @alex4regency
