Barbara Whitcombe, City Warden Manager and Jessica Phillips, the city Warden for the local area, will give a presentation on the work of Environmental Services over the past six months.
Minutes:
Barbara Whitcombe, City Wardens Manager, and Jessica Phillips and Maria Mahmood, City Wardens were present to give an update on their work and the work of Environmental Services in the ward over the last six months.
Barbara gave a presentation and handed out a newsletter that showed achievements and comparisons between the Freemen ward against the rest of the city. This covered a wide range of services, including graffiti, flyposting litter, nuisance dogs, flytipping, licensing, abandoned vehicles, overpainted cable boxes and pest control.
Jessica gave an update on what she had been doing in the ward in addition to dealing with the issues listed above, such as patrols, talking to people face to face, dealing with fly tipping, ensuring businesses adhered to their responsibilities, and reducing the number of bins on streets. She said that she was able to deal with dog fouling through fixed penalty notices, but that she had to catch the offenders in the act. She also said that regular fly-posters were being prosecuted. She had also had success in encouraging premises to clear up dumped rubbish.
Jessica asked for the public’s help in identifying offenders, as she relied on them to tell her about problems they were experiencing. No issue was too trivial for the wardens to deal with. They could do this by calling the Council’s “One Contact” number, 2527001.
The meeting was informed that Jessica had been temporarily promoted and that Maria Mahmood would be taking her place in the ward.
Members of the public asked the following questions and they were answered as below:
1) Is there a statutory number of litter bins that the Council is obliged to provide? Adjacent to the shops on the Fairway there used to be two bins, one of which was set on fire and never replaced. The one remaining bin is often overflowing and I have to pick up rubbish.
There is no statutory obligation to provide bins on streets. The warden can look at changing the emptying schedule if it is getting too full, but shops are also responsible for keeping the area clean outside their premises. The warden can challenge them on this if you let her know where problems are.
2) I’ve called out the graffiti team on numerous occasions to clear graffiti off my wall. There is also graffiti high up on the gable end of the shops on the Fairway that is not being cleaned. Why can’t other premises clear their graffiti? They are probably discouraged by having to pay.
The Council can’t clear graffiti without the premises owner’s consent, as it may damage the surface. Legislation is in the pipeline to make it easier for us to insist that it is cleaned. Prevention is better than cure, and we need to find ways of reducing graffiti, maybe by using covert cameras.
3) A fence at the back of my property was vandalised five times with spare broken slabs that had been left lying around. I asked the Council to remove them and I put them at the front of my property for them to collect. They were left there for two weeks, by which time one had been thrown through my window.
Councillor Shelton agreed to follow this up for the resident.
Councillor Shelton thanked the officers and said to the meeting that this was still a new service that currently had limitations in what they could do. However, more legislation would help them in future to deal with problems that particularly affected residents. Barbara said that it was important for residents to let them know of any incidents or problems, as the more they received, the greater case they would have in bringing in legislation that would help.