New councillor and Transport and Environment Convener Councillor Lesley Macinnes has already ingratiated herself with some North Edinburgh residents by dealing swiftly with their complaints about uncollected rubbish this week.
The matter first came to light during our live blog on Thursday morning when we were covering the council meeting.
Mark Pearson of Telford Road tweeted us to say that he hoped the bins outside his house would get emptied as it had been a whole month since any rubbish had been removed.
Edinburgh Council were quick to respond with a tweet asking him to get in touch if nothing was taken away. Mark said that he had phoned 10 times in the last four weeks to get the rubbish moved.
He also pointed out that this problem has been ongoing for about three years, and explained that bin lorry drivers said they had difficulty getting turned there, but that he had CCTV footage showing they did not even try.
Robert Pearson, Chair of Tenants and Residents in Muirhouse (TRIM) and Friends of West Pilton, tweeted that if Mark did not get the matter resolved he could help as Drylaw Residents have CCTV footage. This video apparently shows that the drivers did not try to get into the street at all.
Alex Cole-Hamilton MSP for the area also responded on Twitter saying he would help if the rubbish did not get moved. He said : ‘The eyesore of waste and recycling bins which are not uplifted is a regular occurrence now across West Edinburgh, but in Drylaw, which often feels overlooked by city leaders, the problem has reached a new low. ‘This council administration has to get the basics right first and so far we see no sign of that.’
But then we tweeted to new Transport and Environment Convener Lesley Macinnes asking if she could perhaps help.
By today all is lovely and clean outside Mark’s house – the rubbish has been moved and the street has been swept. Mark sent us a screenshot of the council workmen who did such a great job.
Councillor Macinnes said on Friday : “The bins in question were collected this morning and I apologise for any inconvenience caused before this. We’re aware of ongoing problems with on-street parking, which often prevents access by refuse collection vehicles. We’re working hard to resolve this and I will aim to keep the affected residents updated.”
Well done Councillor Macinnes! You have certainly made one resident very happy.
The street has never been so clean great effort all around 😁
— MarkP1875 (@markjpearson84) July 1, 2017
Councillor Young who is one of the Liberal Democrat councillors for Almond Ward raised the matter of waste collection at Thursday’s full council meeting in a question to the Convener of Transport and Environment. The answer given was that there will be improvements made in the ICT system to allow those operating the service to record collection issues en route. The hope is that this will provide accurate information to customers complaining and perhaps avoid the need for any complaints at all in time.
One further issue appears to be the employment of agency staff and the council will be recruiting new staff to avoid using temporary operators in future.
Conservative Councillor Joanna Mowat asked a question of the Convener at Thursday’s meeting requesting information about complaints over missed bin collections. Cllr Macinnes replied that there were 1633 complaints in the second week in January which was the highest number in any given week in the last six months.
There was a total of 3,824 complaints from January 2017 to 23 June 2017 about brown bins alone, and a total of 21,695 complaints over the period. This is less than in 2016 but more than in 2015 as you will see from the graph below.
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