Last night Councillor Turner and I held our monthly surgery at the Guild Hall Community Centre. It was just as well that there were two of us as we had local residents queueing out of the door!
I think that is the busiest I have ever seen a Council advice bureau. I find advice bureaux very useful, but it is unusual to see a surgery quite so busy as increasingly local residents get in touch with their Councillors via phone or e-mail messages.
Obviously I can’t go into any detail about individual pieces of casework, but there does seem to be a recurring problem about refuse collection and in particular the collection of the pink-lidded green waste bins. Both myself and Les are receiving complaints from across Walkden about bins and we are in regular contact with officers from Environmental Services about this issue.
If you also have a bin-related problem, please let me know by e-mailing councillor.lindley@salford.gov.uk.
I’d take an educated guess that space to store them will be a major issue with lots of people (and me to).
I assume that these new bins are the same size as the existing bins, which implies someone is expecting our waste-output to double! Is there an option to have these new bins in a smaller size I wonder?
You can keep the existing bags and green boxes if you prefer, and you can arrange to share with neighbours if you do not feel that you have sufficient waste to justify a full bin per household.
Both myself and Conservative colleagues have queried the provisions for people with little space (the problem is most acute for terraced houses and flats) and also for those with limited mobility. We have been assured that everything is in place - the Council have a team of “waste awareness officers” to deal with these sort of queries - but I am very concerned that local residents will not have confidence in the new system if the Council cannot empty the current green waste bins properly.