Jason Kitcat

Resident concern over how communal bins have been implemented in our city continues. And so I continue to try to hold the Conservative administration to account on this issue.

I recently attended a Cabinet meeting to ask Cllr Geoffrey Theobald what he was going to do to stop the new model bins (without the foot pedals) making so much noise when being shut. I also wanted to find out if the council is using more or less fuel to collect waste since the changes were introduced. I submitted my questions in writing a full 15 days before the meeting. Nevertheless I still haven’t got an answer to the question on fuel use, nearly a month since I first asked it. In the clip you’ll see Cllr Theobald claim this is a very difficult bit of information to establish – which I find rather worrying, surely this kind of information should be easily on hand to manage CityClean’s budget.

It turns out that the ‘stopper’ being promised by CityClean to deal with the problems will have no effect on the noise of it slamming shut. The proposed alterations will just prevent the flap from hanging open by welding a bit of metal to the flap to restrict the width to which it can be opened. Cllr Theobald didn’t respond to my query as to the additional cost of this alteration.

Cllr Theobald claims to have apologised at previous council meetings but as you can see in my previous blog post I asked him to apologise but no apology was forthcoming.

Two other things to note in the video clip which the microphones don’t pick up well. One is that several Cabinet members were trying to say I couldn’t ask my supplementary question about whether there were plans to roll out more communal bins as they felt it wasn’t on the same subject as my original questions — which is just bizarre as my questions were all obviously about the bins.

Secondly I made a point of order at the end because at the January council meeting, Cllr Theobald claimed the waste strategy (a key document for the city promised since 2007) would be presented to that very Cabinet meeting, but it wasn’t there!

It has emerged that the strategy will come to Cllr Theobald’s cabinet member meeting this coming week, I’ve looked at the document and my first impression is that it’s very weak indeed. But regardless, if a Councillor tells the whole council that he will present a document to a specific Cabinet meeting and then doesn’t, isn’t that a cause for concern? I think so.

You can read my original written questions and the answers (or non-answers more like!) here. The minutes don’t yet reflect what, as you can see on the video, actually happened; I’m working on having that changed.

It was recently reported in The Argus (sadly not on their website it seems), and I have confirmed with council officers, that Hastings will be introducing communal bins but with communal recycling also. They have been looking at Brighton & Hove’s experiences and it’s interesting that they are doing exactly what I have suggested. If there must be communal bins at least put recycling on a level footing with waste disposal, otherwise recyclables will get just chucked away in the big bins.

Problems with the bins continue to make the news including a video on The Argus website and front page of the Brighton & Hove Leader (with a picture of yours truly) which was an unexpected shock when picking up the morning post!

My previous posts on communal bins, in chronological order:

• Wrong bins in the wrong way
• Question Time at Council: Cllr Theobald says no, he’s been very busy!
• More questions on waste and bins

Does our system of local democracy work? Are we able to get the best out of our local government with the current arrangements? I'm not sure.

A curent case study is the new communal bin system introduce here in Brighton & Hove. Views on these bins vary widely but from residents meetings I've attended I would say about a third are fundamentally opposed to the bins, another third might be open to the bins but not as they have been implemented with the remaining third either positively welcoming or unfussed by them.

There have been lots of bumps on the path of the Conservative's attempts to introduce the bins. First they tried to impose them without consultation but opposition parties forced them to consult. The siting of the bins was fraught and there's been no clear process for adjudication differences over bin locations (I did ask for one but the administration refused). The bins introduced have also been different to the ones trialled and shown in publicity – the new ones do not have foot pedals which made the trial ones fairly easy to use for people with a wide range of mobility levels.

I've been pursuing this matter for a while now… You can review the questions and answers from the January 2009 council meeting. Below are the video clips from my latest questions to the Conservative Cabinet member responsible, Cllr Geoffrey Theobald (split into two parts due to YouTube's 10 minute per clip limit). The required context is provided by the written questions and answers from page 7 of the meeting addendum

I think the answers (or more precisely the lack of them) speak for themself. It's telling how much time Cllr Theobald and his colleague Cllr Brian Oxley trying to persuade me that a Council meeting isn't the right place to challenge these kinds of issues. I absolutely disagree. The council chamber with all the councillors present is exactly where we should hold Cabinet members to account.

That said despite asking the questions in the council chamber I don't believe I got the answers residents deserved. But by having the debate in public forum they will be able to draw their own conclusions from what they see.