Wirral Council and Magenta Living promise to work together to combat flytipping on Crossways Estate
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Birkenhead Constituency Committee 28th July 2016 The public questions referred to below start at the 20 minute 21 second mark
The author lives around half a mile from the area described below.
As you can read in this blog post (which is mainly photos) from January 2011 flytipping has been a problem at Flaybrick Cemetery and the turning heads at the top of Hoblyn Road, Collin Road and Naylor Road for some time.
In the last few days I was walking with my wife Leonora there (sadly without my camera) and there is a lot of flytipping at the top of Naylor Road by Flaybrick Cemetery.
As the photo in this blog post from a local community organiser shows Magenta Living have “tinned up” many of the properties on the Crossways estate meaning that sadly flytipping in that area can be done unobserved.
At the last Birkenhead Constituency Committee (held near the end of July) I asked what was being done about flytipping and what is planned for the future of the houses in these roads.
The written answers given to both questions are below (although you can also watch me ask them in the video above).
Response from Department for Regeneration and Environment (Wirral Council)
Hoblyn Road, Collin Road and Naylor Road are all done on a street cleansing every 4 weeks schedule. Over the past months we have had several deposits of fly tipping emerging at the very top of these areas.
We have had the councils [sic] Enforcement Team and Kingdom investigating the fly tipping and have had positive feedback.
We are also working with Magenta Living regarding the development of the existing houses with additional street cleansing. We will continue to work alongside Magenta living [sic] when the new development is completed working with housing officers tackling waste and recycling and street cleaning and fly tipping.
(Cllr Steve Foulkes who is a Wirral Council appointed Director of Magenta Living left the room during this question)
Response from Magenta:
The Crossways estate in North Birkenhead comprises of 200 3 bed houses including Hoblyn, Collin and Naylor Road along with 13 properties on Hoylake Road.
Very limited demand began to be experienced and Magenta Living took the decision not to allocate any of the properties on Crossways until a longer term, sustainable solution could be found.
Magenta Living has carried out survey work and been working with residents to identify improvement options. One of the principle issues raised by residents was the unpopular ‘gilbury’ units, ground floor extensions that house the bathroom facilities. Two demonstration properties were made available to residents to view in May 2016, one had the bathroom relocated upstairs and made into a 2 bed house, the other was retained as a 3 bed again with the bathroom upstairs.
Feedback from residents was largely very positive and work has subsequently commenced, on a phased basis in order to ensure demand still exists, improving the empty properties in Hoblyn Road, including the demolition the gilbury units, before the occupied properties are then improved.
Other works identified include;
- Demolition of some properties towards Flaybrick Memorial Gardens
- Improved physical security measures
- Improving the external appearance of properties
- Exploring the option of a low cost home ownership scheme
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As UKIP representative for Bidston & St James Ward, i recently put a complaint in to the council about the flytipping in entry’s from Upper Brassey St and Norman St. It is a disgrace that they are only cleaned every 4 weeks. I visited a week after the cleaning schedule and they are back to the same mess. My comments to Wirral Council when i got a phone call off them, was about children playing in the area, dirty syringes, rodents etc. There needs to be an increase from the 4 weekly clean, but all i was told was due to funding this was impossible. Debbie Caplin representing UKIP
When I used to live in that area the alleyways were cleaned each week.
However a few years back Wirral Council cut £1 million from the street cleansing budget hence why it’s now every 4 weeks instead of weekly.
I do know the Birkenhead Constituency Committee has been using some of its budget to tackle the grot spots in Birkenhead (but I’m not sure if these particular alleyways were on its list of places for extra cleansing).
They cut spending, and then waste money going on about changing the bin collections, they charge you for a bin, they charge you for a brown bin service, and if you have larger items they charge you for that to be taken away,
And then they wonder why Wirral has a problem with flytipping they can’t have both, they reduce or offer a free rubbish collection service or we pay for it and live with flytippers!
But maybe if they fined people a £1,000 for dropping litter in the street etc this would get thought to some, and not just keep hitting smokers!
I watched a young lad on a pushbike a few days ago, go in a shop buy a cake or pastie came out the shop dropped the paperbag on the pavement, ate the food and rode off. These are the people the council should be hitting, kids who don’t give a toss and don’t pay taxes!
I was against the ERIC charges for bulky waste, when that was decided (a Labour/Lib Dem coalition was in charge of Wirral Council then) it was acknowledged in the Cabinet resolution agreeing it to increase the budget to deal with the increased flytipping that would result.
I asked for a copy of Wirral Council’s contract this year with Kingdom over litter enforcement during the audit, I’m still waiting!
Bloody Fly Tippers! There’s only one thing worse than a Fly Tipper and that’s two of them tippy toeing up your bloody drive, trampling on your herbaceous borders and dumping some old, soiled and stnking mattress on your bloody Skip that you’ve bloody hired to enable you to rid yourself of all the shite and rubbish you’ve acquired during and throughout your bloody forty one years of marriage to a woman who bloody hates your face and has no regard for the endless drudgery and torment that comes with such a dreadful and tormenting alliance.
I’ve phoned them up. The bloody Council! I told them I’m a diligent recycler of me bloody rubbish, I’ve hired a skip and some sneaky, slimy, oily bastard has gifted me their old stained mattress and I want it removed immediately. Course, to you, me, we and the rest of the Englsh bloody speaking world, it’d be a straightforward matter. One which might have brought about a ‘you poor bastard. We’ll send two good lads round to you now and remove the aforementioned bloody mattress that you never asked for or wanted being dumped on your bloody skip’.
No such rotten luck! After negotiating a dozen phone calls, being made to listen to Handel’s bloody Halleluzah Chorus and being greeted by a succession of Line Managers all desperately keen to tell me the full named title of their bloody job, it ended up with them threatening to call the Constable if I carried out my threat to dump the stained mattress on the Council Chief Executives front drive.
In short, the unwanted bloody mattress deposited in my skip was, according to the Council, became mine and my responsibility to keep until the bloody Skip Hire fella decided to visit me and remove their rubbish collecting fabricated container.
Don’t tell me that the Council are interested in anything to do with Fly Tipping. They ain’t!