Residents will be given an update on environmental issues in Aylestone and the new City Warden Scheme, which will be implemented across the City from April 2010.
Minutes:
Barbara Whitcombe, Team Manager (City Wardens) with Leicester City Council, introduced herself to the meeting. She explained that City Wardens had been introduced as a pilot scheme in October 2008. This had been very successful, so was being rolled out across the City, to enable every Ward to have a dedicated Warden.
Barbara Whitcombe explained the work of the City Wardens, highlighting the following areas:-
· The City Wardens did a lot of education and preventative work, such as promoting recycling and stopping littering and graffiti. They would be pleased to attend further events to increase awareness of the services they offered. Work also was done with the proprietors of food premises to ensure that they cleared up litter from their premises;
· City Wardens had powers to ensure that people cleared up after their dogs, kept their dogs on leads in certain areas and removed them from play areas;
· During the coming year, the City Wardens’ main campaign would be on keeping streets clear of bins. This included domestic, commercial and industrial premises. A lot of areas in the City were No Cold Calling zones, so Wardens would leave a card to say they would be calling back to the property. If the bins had been removed when the Warden returned, no further action was taken. If the bins were still on the street, the Warden attempted to speak to the household / occupier concerned, but if they persisted in leaving bins on the street, they were issued with a Fixed Penalty Notice. The target of the campaign was to remove 10,000 bins from the streets during the year;
· Photographs were taken of graffiti and passed to the Council’s Cleansing Team for action. If necessary, details also were passed to the police, (for example, if the graffiti was offensive or racist);
· The City Wardens had had a lot of success in stopping fly posting in the City Centre, with approximately 17,500 posters being removed by City Wardens in 2009. People found to be persistently fly posting were prosecuted;
· Any rubbish left that was over one black bag in size, but less than a lorry load, was considered to be fly tipping. The Wardens worked with the Council’s environmental crime officers to search for evidence of who had done the fly tipping and had powers to pursue them;
· The City Wardens worked closely with communities on projects to clean up areas. For example, they had 90 adult and 90 child litter pick kits that could be borrowed;
· Anyone wanting to distribute free printed matter in the City needed a licence to do so and was required to clear up any leaflets left on the ground. The service had done a lot of work to ensure that this was adhered to, which had made a big difference to the City Centre in particular; and
· Vehicles for sale parked on the road and vehicles on which work being done on the road were classified as nuisance vehicles, against which the City Wardens were able to take action.
Barbara Whitcombe advised the meeting that, from May 2010, members of the public would be able to contact the City Warden service through a new website, called One Clean Leicester. There also would be a MSN address through which the Wardens could be contacted. Photographs of problems could then be downloaded to the website, or sent by text to the team.
Residents reported that problems with dog fouling were being experienced in Cheshire Gardens and Aylestone Hall gardens. Barbara Whitcombe advised that the requirement for people to clear up after their dog was enforceable on any land open to the air, irrespective of who owned it. Surveillance could be undertaken to identify those responsible and a letter drop could be made to local residents, advising them of how they could notify the Council of any information they had regarding this.