Clean Camden?

You know how much we've all been grumbling about our dirty streets recently? Well this morning we received this from the Council:


"This week the council has launched the Clean Camden campaign, a new initiative to tackle environmental crime across Camden. The campaign will crack down on those people who continue to litter, dump their waste or unwanted items, or not clear up after their dog. The new education and enforcement team will lead operations across the borough to increase the action being taken to tackle these issues.

The Clean Camden campaign also calls on residents to help us crack down on environmental crime by identifying local enviro-crime hotspots or offenders so we can target our work. Anyone caught committing an offence will be issued with an £80 fixed penalty notice, and flytippers face being prosecuted and fined up to £20,000.

Please encourage local residents to visit www.camden.gov.uk/cleancamden or call 020 7974 4444 for more information or to report a problem or offender."

Great, isn't it - we applaud this initiative even if it does turn us all ito whistleblowers, it's probably in a good cause. But... and it's a big but - this is only half the problem.

Much of the mess on our streets is actually caused by the refuse service (Veolia) and their sloppy habits! Litter left lying about and in this weather blowing down the street both before and after the refuse collection, bins not returned properly and almost worst of all, not properly collected. We're sure it can't just be this area  -  it seems to be Borough-wide. Streets aren't swept - Ok we are aware that with less money to spend, the residential streets don't get cleaned as frequently as they used - but what about the main roads? West End Lane, Mill Lane and Fortune Green Road often look as if there's a refuse strike on and that's before tackling the issue of commercial waste!

But its the collection failure rate that exasperates us all -one of our local residents has only had his brown bin emptied once in four weeks, another never seems to get his ordinary bin emptied, others say their recycling has been missed on a regular basis and so on! And at least two people have told us that the refuse collectors have actually been rude to them when they complained. This is completely out of order!

Until the Labour Council takes its responsibilities seriously and cleans up the Veolia contract, sadly we will continue to have dirty streets in spite of their "Clean Camden" campaign!