Jessica Thimbleby – Community Engagement Officer (Waste), Recycle for Wiltshire.
Minutes:
Jessica Thimbley - Community Engagement Officer (Waste), Recycle for Wiltshire. gave a short update on “Recycle for Wiltshire”, a Joint Venture between Wiltshire Wildlife Trust and Wiltshire Council to educate and encourage school children and communities throughout Wiltshire to reduce, reuse and recycle more of their household rubbish.
Points made included:
· Working with Tidworth and Ludgershall pre-schools, presenting waste workshops.
· Carrying out community litter picks.
· Attending various community summer events.
· Holding pop up events at various locations throughout the community area.
· Recycle for Wiltshire were keen to work with all local groups.
Tidworth Garrison Commander Col Steve Lawton raised the following questions:
· Has the budget for litter collection reduced and if so by how much?
Even though the council’s central government funding continues to be reduced, the council in 2016/ 17 increased the budget for litter collection from £2million to £2.5million. All of which could be saved if depositors put their waste in their own bins.
The £2.5million does not include the price of traffic management, which due to the nature of litter collection has increased significantly as more waste is left on high speed roads.
It does not include the investment in modern technology, such as the introduction of the Mywiltshire System which allows information to be sent to the council contractors focusing resources at the earliest opportunity on litter areas.
· Do we still have litter collectors who work daily in our towns and villages? If so how many days/hours?
The town centre is litter picked daily. There is a resource allocation to every town centre. However, the council would expect that if the town centre is cleaned for that resource to move to another area, as cleaning clean streets is not a valuable use of the council’s finances.
Hence, the cleaner will stay as long as is necessary in the town centre. However, referring to litter the council would highlight that the town centre has a number of litter bins, but daily collection of litter is still required. If litter depositors used those bins this would allow the town centre to remain litter free. However, until that time, the council will visit the town centre daily and will ensure that all litter is removed. Thus any litter deposited in a town centre would only be there for a maximum of 1/2day.
The allocation of resources outside of the town centre are allocated by the Mywiltshrie System following reports by residents. This ensures we clean dirty areas. The council inspects the streets and notes that over 80% are at an acceptable standard. If we were to allocate the resource on merely a schedule 80% of the schedule would be based upon cleaning clean streets. Allocating the resource via the My Wiltshire System allows every working hour to be spent on cleaning dirty areas. These means the resource is allocated to where needed. All reports are dealt with to the Code of Practice of Litter and Refuse timescales. The number of litter reports in Tidworth and the surrounding area are small. Hence the council would ask that if there are any known litter issues there are reported for us to action.
The Chairman thanked Jessica Thimbley for her update.