LAT Meeting 12th February 2019 18:30-20:00

Welcome, introductions apologies
Apologies: Philip is in Sri Lanka

Minutes of last meeting, date of next meeting

  • Agreed Minutes of last meeting
  • Scheduled date of next meeting Tuesday 12th March

Guest speaker – Rachel Chasseaud- Assistant Director City Environment
City Clean- troubled service run down

  • There have been £3.5 million of cuts from the service is recent years and has had a large impact on capacity to action things.
  • 2018 has been particularly bad which the council have noticed, especially in missing collections and street service and this has not been helped by a lot of graffiti around the city. The city is not looking its best.
  • Council has recognized there is a problem and came up with a Modernization program to look at the underlying issues.
  • There is going to be a reinvestment of finance next year, there have been lots that has been undone, it take time to get back together.
  • The central areas have felt the biggest impact, and there have been a issue of capacity of bins.
  • We are below the average nationally for recycling at 30% the national average is 44%.
  • There is a detailed report on this on the council website. Analysis, problems and solutions to put things right.
  • One of the reasons there are miss collections, is due to the way the rounds are structured is not very resilient. E.g. Snow.
    • If they miss half a day it has a knock on effect. It is very difficult to catch up.
    • They need to restructure the rounds, and build in more capacity, so that it will not take 2-3 weeks to catch up, especially with the communal bins.
  • One of the other issues is there is a lack of education on recycling, on what can and can’t be recycled.
    • There is going to be a campaign to increase recycling, starting either at the end of the month or beginning of March, which will be ongoing.

  • 3GS, (Environmental enforcement service), have been contracted to issue fines due to littering and dumping of commercial waste. They will be used in the future to also tackle fly tipping, graffiti and dog fouling. At the moment they are under pressure to collect fines. This will be taken away in an effort to be more compassionate, and the council will adopt an ‘early payment’ scheme (in the same manner as speeding fines) and also giving a warning note first.
  • The issue of Graffiti
  • City Clean is struggling to keep up with the amount of it around the city. However it is the responsibility of the owners of the property to remove it from their own property and furniture. People who do not remove graffiti from their property over a long period of time, may be charged by the council in future for removal by the council.
  • They only have 1 member of staff responsible for this at present, in the past there have been 2 crews of people.
  • They have developed a Graffiti reduction strategy, which involves working with police and community groups to remove the graffiti.
    This will work by education and prevention. There are new materials being produced all the time which are able to withstand graffiti, eg wipeable signs.
  • They will help the community groups who want to get involved to remove it themselves.
    A database of the tagging will be compiled. Photos from the public will be sent to the police database. Tags can then be recognised and taggers identified. There can be better enforcement of taggers if their history is tracked. Brighton attracts lots of taggers from outside the city.
  • There will also be a public consultation with residents on how they want to get rid of the graffiti off their properties. There is more information on the council website about the Modernization project and a report on what has and will be done.
  • As part of the strategy they are looking into ways where people can donate the paint they don’t need and re use it.
  • Street cleaners
  • Every street should have its own street cleaner.
  • The problems with the streets such as Stanley road and Shaftsbury road is down to stretched resources. A solution to these roads’ issue particularly is re timetabling these specific rounds as, at present they are very rushed for time.

Action Point: Rachel will look at this, and the resourcing issue.

  • There has been an increase in rubbish being left after lorries gone past.
  • This is a performance issue with crews, this needs to be built into the round re structures. At the moment there are not enough cleaners available to follow the rounds.
  • the Community Payback scheme and the Youth Offenders service tends to work more on ‘projects’ rather than general cleaning up, eg graffiti removal. Simon Banister is very involved with this and taking this forward.
  • The members of staff that City Clean has are really good. They work 365 days a year and are demoralized and frustrated that they can’t do the jobs they used to do. They do want to do a good job. The challenge is for them is to do it with less money, which needs to be looked at by the company as a whole.

  • Pride
    City Clean is talking to Pride at present.
  • They are looking into a scheme that involves volunteers that will deal with a wider clean of the city and not just Preston Park.
  • The main issue they face is that it takes lots of resources to deal with the 2 day clean up, which then knocks on into the next days’ collections.

  • Recycling
    City Clean and the council are going to be carrying out a campaign on what you can and can’t recycle. It is being rolled out by leaflet drop across the city.
  • As it stands the public can recycle anything other than plastic pots, tubs and trays. (PTTs) The reason is due to there not being a market for these at present.
  • There is a report on online with the details on recycling, on the council website.
  • The government have a waste strategy in place, as part of the strategy they are looking at putting a tax on companies that produce PTTs, so that they can find other ways of packaging these items, hence reducing the amount of PTTs we use.
  • The way recycling is monitored is by the bin men. A bin with more than 10% contamination means it will have to all go to the incinerator in Newhaven. Although this is not desirable, the power produced is used in the electric grid, the ashes are used for road building and any metals are collected and recycled.
  • The Green Store in the Open Market is another place that can provide information on where things can be recycled.

  • Commercial wheelie bins on public high ways
  • There is an issue with the commercial bins in some areas getting out of control with the amount of bins each business has and when they are emptied, particularly in the North Laine area.
  • A solution to this is to have designated bin bays that are colour co-coordinated, there is going to be a audit going on for what is right for the area.
  • There is no policy at present; they need to work on one to tackle the issue. There also needs to be a consultation on this issue.
  • Some of the issue is for the highways department of the council to deal with; there is an audit and consultation happening with small businesses.
  • There is no bin replacement service in place as of yet or a power wash system available to deal with the smell that has been occurring in some bins. They will be replacing some of the worst bins soon. The community payback scheme will be used to help this.

Brief updates (if any)

  • There has been a response from Caroline Lucas on a variety of issues. She has had a discussion with Chief inspector Rachel Sweeney about her community-policing role, where she was able to raise the issues the LAT has raised with her.
  • A big positive is the attendance at LATs, which chief inspector sees as a high priority. She has offered reassurance that a plan was coming together so that officers can attend regularly.
  • Delivery drivers’ enforcement, Brian McCarthy is the leading officer on this issue and she has asked him to some engagement work on this to get a clearer view on what is happening. There will be a tactical plan in place.
    Aggressive begging, the police are aware of a number of individual with complex needs were key to this and they are liaising with the community safety team.
  • Anti social behaviour: in particular, New Road, The Level and London Road. The problem at the Level peaked in the summer, but since the mobile police unit has been placed there, the problems have decreased. It could just be because we are in winter. This will be kept under review.
  • She was not aware of any issues with the Clyde Road phone box, but she will check this.
  • Knife crime- Chief Inspector has commissioned a report to get a better picture, and will keep her updated.
  • Overall from Caroline’s reply is that she is very keen to liaise with the LATs more frequently.

Any other business (please announce before the start of the meetings)   

  • Reporting a crime that is happening (??)
  • State of maintenance at New England Quarter (??)
    Both to be carried over until next meeting

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