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News for Weston-super-Mare Central Ward from local councillors Mike Bell and Robert Payne : serving you on North Somerset Council and Weston-super-Mare Town Council Learn more
by mikebell on 9 May, 2018
Councillor Mike Bell reports: “Lots of residents have contacted me about rubbish in the seafront and parks over the Bank Holiday weekend. There were some issues with bins not being emptied frequently enough and with visitors leaving rubbish behind them.
“I’ve raised this with council officers to ask them to look again at what can be done to learn lessons for the future. I’ve also asked that the council look at best practice from elsewhere to see what more could be done to encourage responsible citizenship. I’ve suggested we could look at things ranging from improved signage to encourage people to use bins/take rubbish home, through to offering discounts on car parking if people take a bag of litter (their own or collected) to the seafront office.
“If anyone has any other ideas, do let me know.”
This is the initial response Mike has received from council officers, so some signs that things will improve in future. The clean-up job is always excellent, but the council does need to be better at managing demand and encouraging and enabling the right behaviours:
“The sheer number of people visiting and enjoying the town over the three day period was more than they expected. Although not comparable in weather, on the Bank Holiday last year the council sold around 4,000 seafront parking tickets. This year it was around 12,000. The seafront team estimated that the number of people was higher than the air festival weekend.
T”here were additional staff working on the Sunday and Monday evening until 8pm but it is fair to say the condition of the seafront was not returned to a high standard until the following morning but would have proved difficult to clear thoroughly during the evening as there were still so many people around.
“Again on speaking with Glendale and the seafront team, staff cleaning these areas worked extremely hard each morning to return these areas to a high standard.
“We have discussed improvements and it is around your point of encouraging disposal of items by people as they leave, as the provision of large wheeled bins was inadequate partly because the area was too busy to safely manoeuvre them to be emptied. There was also a confused use of the large recycling bins which regrettably due to high contamination levels within them, would probably be better swapped over for residual waste. We will therefore look to have additional quantities of bins available for use at peak times.”
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