COUNCIL PARKING UP THE WRONG TREE

Much to the annoyance of some locals, other locals have been parking in front of the new communal bins on Hart Street between 9.50pm and 7.50am.

On several occasions, this practice (always by the same three drivers, it seems) has blocked the bins from the road and prevented them being emptied.

The recently established New Town Cleaner Streets Campaign (NTCSC) has been taking photographs of the problem and sending them to the Council’s Waste Services and Parking Operations along with timely reports.

Parking has now replied. An official begins by pointing out that its Enforcement Contractor operates exclusively from Mondays–Saturdays between the hours of 8.30am and 6.30pm.

She then cheerfully passes the buck to Waste Services, saying that she has ‘asked that the bins be moved to a more appropriate location, thus freeing up the permit parking places which should alleviate the need to double park.’  She doesn't seem to realise that bins were positioned – for better or worse – only after painstaking consultation and negotiation with locals.

Officials have now marked the case as Resolved.

Spurtle finds these self-satisfied bureaucratic blinkers rather funny. Members of the NTCSC do not. They have smoke coming out of their ears. They are resolved to press separate Council departments into doing some joined-up thinking.

‘It is essential,’ their spokesperson says, ‘to find some way to keep the area around the bins clear 24 hours a day.’

Meanwhile, NTCSC plans also to deploy some polite leaflets outlining the issues. They will place these under the windscreen wipers of the ‘problem parkers’ and see if courtesy and common sense can triumph where Council customer service clearly hasn’t.

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@theSpurtle @NTCleanStreets I'm quite surprised to see a BMW driver doing something this naughty.