Adrian Russell, Service Director, Environmental Services will give a presentation of the Environmental Services work carried out in Humberstone and Hamilton Ward and give an update on the work of City Wardens.
Minutes:
Adrian Russell gave a presentation regarding Environmental services in the ward.
Collection and Recycling
He advised that the “Five for Free” service for collecting bulky items had been very popular in the ward with over 1100 collections made in the first six months of the year. He added that only in 1 in 2000 bins have been missed and those reported had been collected the next working day.
Composting and recycling rate for the ward was 33% last year with a further 9% being used for fuel. This equated to 42% of domestic waste diverted from landfill. Adrioan explained that all metals and plastic was automatically extracted from the kerbside collections at the Bursam Recycling Site.
Clean Streets
The Council has area-based street cleaning teams working throughout the city to deal with the removal of flytipping, abandoned vehicles, discarded needles and graffiti.
Following national guidelines, levels of cleanliness were monitored monthly with levels of litter, graffiti, flyposting and flytipping assessed in a random selection of streets.
Graffiti removal
A new graffiti removal service had been started to remove graffiti from Virgin Media cable boxes. Virgin Media had agreed to provide funding so that the Council could paint over graffiti on their boxes. Since the scheme began in June of this year 83 boxes had been painted in the ward and a further 1116 city wide.
Pest Control
The Councils pest control team has provided treatment for a wide range of pest in the ward and it was noted that the wards mouse problems were below city average.
Dog Wardens
Dog wardens dealt with stray, dangerous and nuisance dogs and had dealt with incidents in the ward that were in line with the city average. From September this year Dog Control orders had been introduced giving tougher penalties and fines to persons who failed to clean up after their dogs and dogs were now excluded from children’s play areas.
Noisy Neighbours
Many of the noise problems occur outside normal working hours, therefore the Noise Control team had a call out service which operates between 9.00 am and 2.00am Mondays to Fridays and 2.00 pm to 2.00 am Saturdays and Sundays.
This is one of the busiest services provided by Environmental Services and it had dealt with a wide range of complaints during the previous 6 months. Warning letters were sent to those responsible, but if this did not resolve the problem, legal action could be taken, that could also include the confiscation of noisy equipment.
Food premises
The Business Regulations Team had inspected 7 food businesses in the area in the previous 6 months. Businesses are rated on a “Smiley Face” basis. And businesses were encouraged to display these results in a prominent place in their premises.
Licensing – Street Trading
It was stated that there was a general issue around food vans trading outside schools in Leicester. Now all such street traders throughout the city were required to obtain a street trading licence. The Council have a general presumption against issuing licences, however, each application would be judged on its own merits.
Building Control
Following the earth tremor in February, the 24-hour emergency Building Control Service worked with the Fire and Rescue service to secure unsafe buildings. During the first 6 months of the year, 101 calls were made to deal with a range of building safety concerns.
The Building Control Team were also responsible for securing empty and vandalised buildings, including the arranging of the fitting of steel security shutters to prevent unauthorised access to the building.
10, 000 Trees
This new initiative will see 10,000 trees planted across the city in the next three years. This ambitious project would significantly increase the number of trees in Leicester. Leicester City Council and Groundwork Leicester were seeking feedback as to where and what type of trees to plant.
Trolley Collection
The Meeting asked if the local supermarket could be instructed to retrieve abandoned shopping trolleys from around the area. The Supermarket no longer collected the abandoned trolleys as they had installed a “protection ring” around the store, designed to stop trolleys being removed from the site. However, as this was still a problem in the ward Adrian gave assurances that he would look into the possibility of the council collecting the trolleys and charging the store for the service.
RESOLVED:
that the information be noted.