Has your bin been emptied?

Labour chiefs faced a grilling by angry residents and binmen as the bins fiasco rumbled on.

Top man Councillor Cliff Morris – Leader  of the Council – and Cllr Sufrana Bashir-Ismail, his Executive Member for Cleaner, Greener, Safer were sat on a panel organised by The Bolton News, where residents were invited along to ask the difficult questions.

It comes as residents across Westhoughton have not had their bins emptied over the past six weeks, and there is little sign of improvement. An internet poll on this website found that 71% of people said they were fed up with the currently problems.

It has been a deeply embarrassing few weeks for the Labour party in Bolton, and it all came to a head when the meeting was convened this week. Even the binmen spoke up – one even challenging the panel members to come and do his job for a week, promising to give a day’s wage to charity if they could complete the job successfully.

Cllr Bashir-Ismail was heckled noisily by the audience when she claimed the meeting was becoming ‘political’.

Westhoughton South ward councillor David Wilkinson said: “The most simple of question on everyone’s lips has become the most difficult question for Labour’s bosses. Everyone in Westhoughton is asking me, ‘When is my bin going to be emptied?’ and they just can’t give a straight answer.”

“We have been inundated with frustrated people who have been left without a bin collection for weeks. We are continuing to pressure the Labour-run council for answers, and above all, some action,” he added.

At the Council Meeting on 21st October Liberal Democrat Councillors strongly criticised the chaotic situation around bin collections and the many bins that are missed each week. We asked a number of critical questions of the Executive Member responsible for the service (Councillor Sulfrana Bashir-Ismail).

The questions we asked covered:

• Did the Executive Member stand by her decision to implement the changes to the bin collections, and would she give her full and public support?
• Did the Executive Member agree that the current failure to collect grey bins for several weeks at a time was a breach of Labour’s election promise?
• Could the Executive Member confirm whether there was now a policy not to issue green bins to terraced houses (even those with small gerdens back and front) and if so, was there any intention to remove green bins from those properties?
• What actions were being taken to ensure that refuse crews knew the location of bins where there should be an ‘assisted collection’ and to ensure that bins were returned to the correct position afetr emptying?
• What was the cost of additional crews, additional journeys and other measures to remedy mistakes of non collection of bins?
• Would there be any help for the ‘hard to reach’ areas of the Borough where there is no recycling available, and missed bins can cause additional problems?
• Has there been any change to the service standard where missed bins should be collected within 3 working days?

Apart from confirming that no policies had changed, we got little in the way of answers.

It was to be expected that Labour Councillors would not wish to raise questions publicly about probably the worst current problem in provision of services. What was surprising was that the Conservatives also were totally silent.

We later moved an amendment “That the Executive Member be urged to take a higher public profile in support of her policy and the officers that are carrying out that policy”. Most Conservatives supported that, but it was defeated because they were again split – several Conservatives voting with Labour and others abstaining.