Proposed charges for garden waste collection service

As coalition government imposed cuts to its budget reach £190 million Durham County Council is consulting on proposals to introduce a charge for garden waste collections where residents choose to remain part of the scheme.

We have reproduced below details of the consultation. If you want to have your say on the council's proposals click on www.durham.gov.uk to take part in the on-line survey or call 03000 266 112 for a paper copy of the survey.

Consultation on review of garden waste collections

This consultation gives you the chance to have your say on proposed changes to the garden waste collection service in County Durham which include the introduction of a charge for the service.

Timetable

The consultation began on Friday 20 September and ends on Monday 28 October 2013.

How to get involved

You can have your say in the following ways:

• Read the background information and complete the online survey below.
• Call us on the contact number at the bottom of this page for a paper copy of the survey.

Background information

We currently provide a free, fortnightly garden waste collection service to 151,700 properties in County Durham between spring and autumn. A further 4,200 households in the Teesdale area also receive a free collection service from Teesdale Conservation Volunteers (trading as Rotters) who work in partnership with the County Council. In 2012, around 24,500 tonnes of garden waste were collected by us and Rotters.

We have carried out a review of the garden waste collection service. The existing service does not cover all households with gardens. In addition, we need to save £933,000 from the waste management service in line with the council’s medium term financial plan. The County Council is continuing to face large reductions in funding and is required to make savings of almost £190 million for the period 2011 to 2017.

The review has concluded that we need to introduce a charge for garden waste collections for the service to continue in future. This will affect all households with a garden, particularly those households that currently receive a garden waste collection service.

Proposals for garden waste collections in 2014

Proposed collection area

We are proposing to offer the service to 35,000 additional households in the county which have previously not had the chance to join the scheme. The proposed changes will also mean that households in some very rural areas will no longer receive the service. Garden waste - proposed collection boundary.pdf (1 page, 7735kb) is a map that shows the areas of the county where we are proposing to offer garden waste collections from 2014.

Introducing a charge for the service

We are proposing to introduce an annual charge of £20 for 16 fortnightly collections of garden waste between April and November.

Residents who sign up for the service and pay the annual fee will receive a sticker for their garden waste bin. Residents who haven’t previously been supplied with a garden waste bin but wish to sign up for the service will be issued with a new bin with sticker on payment of the annual fee. The bin collection crews will be able to identify which households have subscribed to the service by the sticker on the bin. Details will also be logged on the collection vehicle’s electronic system. Residents can be provided with more than one bin. There will be a charge for additional bins.

Residents who choose not to sign up for the service but who have previously been supplied with a bin for garden waste will be able to have the existing bin removed on request.

Have your say

We would like your views on the proposals for the garden waste collection service. Please complete our Garden waste online survey.

Gully and drain works at Castle Eden

Gully repair and renewal works are to begin on the B1281 at Hallow Hill, just to the east of Castle Eden, on Monday 30 September 2013.

Works  will take place under two-way traffic lights and are expected to take between 3 and 4 days to complete.

We have also been assured that missing drain covers in the area are to be replaced once the works programme is finished.

Littering and other environmental issues in Blackhall

Along with the parish clerk, me and Lynn met a couple of months ago with the manager of the clean & green team to discuss a number of environmental issues in our area.

After seeing initially a real improvement in the performance of the team it would seem that over the last week or so there have been a number of problems with litter picking, especially in certain areas of Blackhall Colliery. 

Following a walkabout in the village yesterday we identified a number of locations which continue to cause concern for us and residents, particularly around the library and the former British Legion club and also at the fenced area along the length of East Street.

We have contacted the team manager again today to express our concerns. He agrees that the service has regressed a little and has committed the team to a full clean up of the area over the next day or so. We have also asked that the streets be cleaned each Friday following the bin collection rounds, when some places tend to become quite untidy.

Because shrub beds also cause problems with collecting and holding litter we have asked that shrub beds in our area be removed, but only where residents are in agreement. 

Please contact us if you know of any specific areas in need of attention and we'll forward your ideas to the clean & green team for their attention.

Environmental issues in Middle Street, Blackhall

On 7 August 2013 we contacted the Environmental Health & Consumer Protection department at county hall in response to residents concerns about a number of environmental issues in Blackhall. This relates to the patch of unused land in Middle Street immediately adjacent to the library.

EHCP replied to our query today and we have reproduced their response below:

We took at look at all the issues you raised back in August - here are our findings.

Garage: We did not think it looked dangerous although we took the view that the open door allowed unauthorised access. The owner was asked to secure the door and shortly after our visit the door was secured. There were waste materials stored / dumped in the garage. We asked for them to be removed at the same time as the door was made secure.

Fence: Although not an EHCP issue the fence was found to be leaning back into the garden and therefore unlikely to be a danger to passers-by.

Overgrown garden: The overgrown garden is not in itself a public health issue - therefore we were looking only for any public health / rodent infestation issues. The officer gained access to the garden area and could see no evidence of an infestation of rodents.

If the leaning fence still causes concern to passers-by then you may wish to consider contacting Building Control (dangerous structures) or Highways (via Highways Action Line) as the fence is immediately adjacent to the public footpath. They may also wish to consider whether the commercial wheelie bins cause an obstruction to footpath users by being left on the pavement by whoever hires them from DCC.

Clearly not all of our concerns have been fully addressed so we have contacted the Building Control section and the Highways Action Line as advised. We will update on progress in due course.

Blackhall PACT meeting details

The next monthly meeting of the PACT (Police and Communities Together) will take place tomorrow evening at 6pm in the Resource Centre, Middle Street, Blackhall Colliery.

This is your opportunity to raise any local crime and anti-social behaviour issues with the police and neighbourhood wardens.

Me and Lynn are usually in attendance to deal with any community or council related issues but we have a prior engagement at county hall and won't be able to get along to the PACT meeting on this occasion. However if you have anything you want to raise with us please get in touch in the usual way.

Update on A1086 (Blackhall to Horden) roadworks

Following a number of enquiries recently about apparent delays to the ongoing roadworks on the A1086 between Blackhall Colliery and Horden we asked this morning for an update from the highways department.

To avoid confusion (and because we don't understand some of the technical terms) we have reproduced the response in full below:

Site Investigation works associated with the slip finished on site 1/08/2013. Unfortunately, the SI had been delayed and overrun as a consequence of Northern Gas Networks identifying a number of leaks of the medium pressure gas main in the road. Concentrations of gas in the ground had been recorded as high and the original programmed start of the SI drilling was prevented by NGN. NGN works were blocking access for the SI – so this was the situation and cause of delays. 

Currently, the  situation is that the vertical scarp of the land slip (approximately 3m height) is at the immediate back of the 1m wide verge to the kerbline of the northbound lane and the Dene bottom is some 30 metres below.  The nature of the ground/slip is influenced very much by weather and soil saturation. Regards the traffic management and temporary traffic lights on the A1086, whilst the SI works are now complete, they need to  remain in place until such time that the culvert and landslip have been repaired and reinstated. 

We will look to see if we can modify the traffic management to open two way lanes without the need for lights.

Street lighting consultation ends soon!

We have submitted our response today to the county council's public consultation on street lighting (see post dated 2 August 2013 for background and contact details). 

It's essential that as many people as possible respond along similar lines. If we don't we could be left in the dark!

Please note that the consultation exercise ends on 26 September 2013.

Cllr Rob Crute & Cllr Lynn Pounder (Blackhalls Division)

Joint response to Durham County Council’s street lighting consultation

4 September 2013

We submit these comments in response to Durham County Council’s consultation on proposals to reduce street lighting as part of its overall street lighting policy. Specifically we would like to comment on proposals to switch off street lighting in those areas in which it is considered safe to do so and on the potential impact on pedestrian safety if such actions were adopted in this case.

As a result of cable theft last year there has been a significant reduction in street lighting on the road connecting Blackhall Colliery with Hesleden, along with the roads connecting Hesleden with High Hesleden and High Hesleden with Monk Hesleden. Complaints we have received during this time (which we have subsequently passed on to Brian Buckley and the Highways section) reflect the high level of concern expressed by residents in these areas.

Blackhall and Hesleden are two communities extremely closely linked in geographical and social terms and all roads connecting the two settlements are very well used on a regular basis by families and friends visiting one another. Understandably residents are concerned about the safety of pedestrians should streets remain unlit, especially during the long and dark winter nights. As local councillors we share those concerns and are particularly worried about the impact on public safety in these areas if street lighting was to be reduced or switched off entirely.

It should be noted that both settlements have been hit particularly hard recently by cuts to public bus services. Without a well-lit and accessible road network they risk becoming isolated and insular, something we consider entirely unacceptable.

In summary we do not think it is safe to switch off street lights in this area. Further we are strongly of the opinion that public safety will be severely compromised if any decision were to be made to leave these roads in darkness.

For the reasons outlined above we urge Durham County Council to reinstate street lighting in this area as a matter of urgency.

As we saw it : a more accurate account of the Horse Fair

You may have seen an article in the Hartlepool Mail last week which reported, from a police perspective, on the recent horse fair in Blackhall Colliery. We felt that the article presented a distorted view of the event as we saw it, and also from the position of many residents and businesses in the village.

We have written today to the editor of the Hartlepool Mail to set the record straight and we have reproduced the letter here in the event it fails to be published:

Whilst the article entitled “Police say travellers’ horse fair in Blackhall went extremely well” (Hartlepool Mail, Tuesday 27 August 2013) may be accurate in reporting the views of Durham constabulary, its tone did nothing to reflect the true views of local residents and both local county councillors.

The police could be justified in claiming to respond to residents’ fears and complaints during the event. However many people in Blackhall Colliery felt let down and isolated by the initial response by the police and the county council on the very first night of the fair when travellers used heavy machinery to breach security gates to gain illegal access to the site. This was done in full view of police officers (apparently county council officers were not even in attendance) which fuels the perception, rightly or wrongly, that the authorities stand on the side of the travellers rather than the settled community.

The distortion of the Mail article was compounded by somewhat lazy journalism in which the author, rather than speak to either county councillor, lifted quotes from our blog. Those comments were written at the start of the event and were intended to have a calming effect on both travelling and settled communities by portraying a strong police presence in the village. As part of the Mail article however they were taken entirely out of context and, presented alongside contemporary police quotes in the article, appeared to promote the view that me and Lynn were reflecting on the event with an air of satisfaction.

This wholly misrepresents our view of the horse fair, which is more accurately reflected in the demands of our residents that this event must never again take place in our village.