The failure of Rother District Council’s (RDC) litter collectors to actually collect rubbish on the due date has led to acerbic correspondence from Rye Town Councillor Andy Stuart to Rye’s RDC Councillor David Russell.
The collections in questions are in some of Rye’s most historic streets in the Citadel much visited by tourists where (quite often) the historic homes can not cope with modern day litter bins and the rubbish is often in plastic bags – a favourite target for seagulls if left to linger.
Andy contacts David: January 19, 2016 –
Having failed to collect my recycling just after Xmas, Rother failed to collect it again last Monday (as well as all the rest of West Street and Mermaid Street). I reported the failure online on Tuesday and rang up again on Friday as the streets were still full of piles of pink plastic bags as well as rubbish from some bags that had been pulled apart by gulls.
I was told that your contractors have five working days to clear up after a failure to collect – which, I was told, was quite reasonable, as they are very busy and would have to find a truck and go out especially to fulfil their job!!! why not collect it on the designated day then?
It is now over a week and the reluctant contractors have still failed to collect the recycling which has been sitting around in some of the town’s main streets that tourists visit! If I were the Mermaid I would be furious that rubbish bags are permanently sitting on the road immediately outside their front entrance because your contractors simply cannot be arsed to do the job!!!
It makes it look like we (Rye) cannot be bothered and are a very tatty little town – tourists will be unaware that it is Rother that runs our affairs but seemingly can’t be bothered!
I rang RDC Customer Services yet again yesterday and I was told by the rubbish team that your contractors still hadn’t collected the recycling from last Monday (11 Jan) because they have 5 working days after the failure is reported, which in itself can’t be reported until the day after the contractor can’t be bothered to do its job and collect from West Street and Mermaid Street.
In other words, under their contract they had until the close of yesterday to do their jobs (and leave the streets of Rye full of rubbish bags for 9 days!!!!) that we, the Council Tax payers, have paid them to do. I was told that I should take it up with my Councillor, which is you David. But you aren’t doing anything!!
I was told the Contractors would do something as it wasn’t in their interests to ignore the rubbish as they would be fined. How much? Clearly not enough to get a truck out and do the job they were paid to do 10 days ago!! The recycling is still there at the moment so the desperately pathetic litany of excuses have run out of time!
Please get RDC and its contractors to pull their fingers out immediately,
Yours Andy”
From Andy to David: January 21, 2016:
“Another day, another failure to collect the recycling in Mermaid Street and West Street 11, yes ELEVEN, days after it should have been collected and still deafening silence from you!!
Given the amount of rubbish (as RDC failed to collect just after Xmas as pointed out below in my previous emails) and doing my bit and collected a couple of neighbours’ sacks off the street, I’ve put it all in my brown recycling bin (with lots of overflow too!) to protect it from the seagulls and also to make sure we can get in and out of the house given the huge quantity of recycling your contractors seemingly can’t be bothered to collect!
A label has been attached to the the brown bin by your garden waste team making clear that recycling mustn’t go in it!! Had the recycling been collected as per the contract then it wouldn’t have upset the garden waste team!!!
I’ve included your Public Realm Officer in the email as they might do something about it! Also the joint chief executives. No-one else seems to care at RDC so why should the contractors? It would seem they’ve decided to take whatever feeble fine they are charged for sticking two metaphorical fingers up at the public and are waiting for the next scheduled collection. But since they haven’t done the last two collections what evidence is there that they will come next Monday?
Not only is it unsightly, it is quite frankly dangerous for us to squeeze past the rubbish and go onto the street, but it also might provide an indication to burglars that no-one is at home.
Please would someone at RDC have the decency to contact me today to explain what is going on and when the recycling will be collected.
Yours
Andy Stuart”
Rye News and the seagulls are keeping an eye on the situation.
[Source: Andy Stuart]