Since Cityclean was probed for fraud and bullying back in 2020, one could argue that the council’s rubbish, recycling and street cleaning operation has had a good run.
Last year, Cityclean staff went on strike and won increased pay from the present council administration and a deal limiting rubbish round changes by management.
Now, and for the past few months, and also less than a year on from the winning deal that ended unilateral round changes, rubbish collections are being missed across Hove.
Where individual residents and streets have been complaining about missed collections, this piece is written to assure them that they are not alone.
Missed collections are not a one off. There is a pandemic of missed collections, a sign of a serious breakdown at Cityclean that neither the Greens nor Labour want to talk about before the local elections.
In Withdean, residents have complained that the recycling bins have been repositioned to below the Withdean Stadium site, in Tongdean Lane.
Not only have residents complained about how unsightly and smelly these bins are, it also seems from emails in my inbox that these are not being emptied frequently enough, with residents asking for them to be moved elsewhere.
In Tongdean, I know about the ongoing issues with more than the occasional vehicle breakdown, noting in emails that they wouldn’t contact a councillor or a director of service for just one missed collection. They’ve had a few.
In The Paddock, off The Droveway, residents have had the same problem for months – refuse collectors deciding not to collect from their road while the recycling team were collecting on their rounds.
Residents have been writing to us and to Cityclean and to officers for months and are now left wondering whether a driver or a crew manager are deciding not to collect our rubbish – a service they pay for.
Residents have also cited health and safety hazards on account of missed collections.
In Hove Park, Councillor Vanessa Brown has recently written to senior officers asking who was in -charge of park bins saying the “situation in Hove Park is beyond a joke now”.
It was two years ago at budget council that Councillor Brown and I secured funding for new rubbish and recycling bins for Hove Park and yet we still have nothing but excuses after excuses.
A resident from Marmion Road recently wrote to me noting how, in recent weeks, bins were emptied once every three weeks on a regular basis instead of the weekly Cityclean contracted collections.
Residents at Marlborough Court have also written in complaining of neglect from the council as rubbish was not being collected on account of objects falling from the balconies.
Scaffolding has been in place since 2018, in line with health and safety requirements, to ensure no harm is caused to residents or bin collectors – but collections appear to have been stopped unilaterally on safety grounds.
At Woodland Court, residents have been complaining for weeks that Cityclean has not been turning up to empty the bins and are now citing an alleged rat infestation as a reason for not collecting.
Residents have said that the claims about rats are untrue but if they were, they could probably be blamed on missed collections.
As a taxpaying resident in Hove, you just can’t win against the plethora of excuses in the midst of this epidemic of missed collections.
It’s also quite clear from looking at posts on social media that the cases of the residents cited here are but a drop in the ocean.
Can someone at the council therefore answer these questions: What is going on at Cityclean? And is the 2022 win for ending rubbish round changes by management coming home to roost?
The Conservative Group recently published our Manifesto for the Elections on Thursday 4 May. Top of our list of commitments is to “Sort out rubbish and recycling collections”. To read the full manifesto, click here.
Samer Bagaeen is a Conservative councillor for Hove Park ward on Brighton and Hove City Council.
I live in Westdene. There has been a fair number of missed collections. You are told to contact your councillor. A pretty pointless exercise, when you have three inept Green councillors whose only interest is spaffing away money on useless cycling infrastructure and other vanity projects.
To say they are useless, is a serious understatement.
Vote out Samer Bagaeen in May. 10 years of Tory austerity have caused many of these problems – send the national govt a message by voting out these useless local Tory councillors who are all talk and no action.
Rubbish! Collection of rubbish and recycling is a basic statutory duty of a council, which the current lot of abysmal councillors who allegedly run the council have failed to sort out, as did the previous Labour lot. Consider this: the Greens have apparently just spent £13.5m of taxpayers’ money on this very limited Beryl bike thing, which is not a statutory duty and is unlikely to pay back in the short-term or even medium term. And then we get the Green Manifesto, which talks about improving recycling but wanting to reduce rubbish collection to fortnightly. The so-called ‘Tory austerity’ was caused originally by the Labour Government leaving the country in a total financial mess and, yes, subsequent Tory Governments haven’t got it right, but history will tell you that Labour constantly hits people in the pocket and doesn’t improve their lot. I don’t know Samer Bageen but I would remind you that he is not a councillor of the various political showers that have been ‘in charge’ of B&H for many years now. Seems to me that he is not spouting a party political position but would just like to see basic statutory functions working properly, which they don’t. This position is not unique to him – there are various councillors all over the city of several hues or none (but not Greens, notably) trying to get this sorted out.
The “so called ‘Tory austerity'” was caused by the Tories!
Austerity is the economic illiterate belief that a sovereign national economy is like a family budget. It isn’t.
The best way to pay down national debt is to maintain/increase economic activity. So when public and business hasn’t got money, it is better for the Government to spend, feeding into the economy, which raises tax revenues. Governments can do this because they are sovereign. At a later date, if the economy is overheating, the Government can cut back to slow it, rather than relying on BoE to up interest rates.
George Osbourne did the opposite. He was cutting at the same time as the public and business, damaging the economy, reducing tax take and therefore making it harder to pay back debt. It cost the economy £500 billion! Completely lost due to economic illiteracy.
Now am saying anything controversial? No, I’m just reiterating people such as the Nobel prize winner for economics Joseph Stitglitz.
The Tories have failed in every respect. Now there are 9 million people in ABSOLUTE poverty. Not relative but absolute. People can’t eat. They can’t heat their homes. Nobody else is to blame for this other than 13 years of the Tories.
Similarly with councils. with the Tory funding cuts to councils, which is the biggest input to council budgets, not council tax, councils are facing bankruptcy up and down the country. If you think the Tories are great a running councils, try living in Northamptonshire. If you think Labour are great, try living in Croydon.
If you want to understand why there are so many cuts in Brighton, ask yourself one simple question: is this just happening in Brighton or is this happening in every council in the country? The answer is the cuts are everywhere.
Now, by all means vote for whoever you like, based on what you particularly want from a council but the fact is whoever gets elected in Brighton & Hove, they are going to struggle with financing the council unless whoever is running the Government increases council funding.
Martha
Think you will find that Samer Bagaeen is a Councillor not an MP.
You say years of Tory austerity have caused many of these problems, well no not really being BHCC decide where to spend their budgets.
Rubbish is a basic legal requirement, failure and mis-management of BHCC not the Government, that just the tip of the iceberg of failures and mis management.
You do understand that Greens and Labour have run this city for a decade or so therefore any other parties can hardly have much influence in what happens in and around the city.
These are worrying times with question marks on both Green and Labour for varying reasons, I don’t particularly want a tory council either and the rest I don’t think have much of a chance in overall control.
Here’s a controversial view: the problems with Brighton council are caused by BOTH a decade of central govt cuts AND local leaders not spending the limited funds they have sensibly. The stupid black and white arguments people make on here are ridiculous. Councillors are paid peanuts (literally minimum wage) so you tend to get monkeys, which ever political party is in control.
Mark
Utter dribble. Rubbish collection is a basic legal requirement. The problem isn’t Government cuts where rubbish is concerned, we pay high council taxes, the excuses this council comes up with are incredible.
No staff, no vehicles, we couldn’t get our vehicle down the street, excuse after excuse just sheer incompetence at every level.
Nothing to do with government.
You’re not wrong about it being a legal requirement that local authority has a duty to maintain the health and safety of the public through black bin bag waste collection, specifically the Environmental Protection Act 1990.
On average, you pay 11p a month towards waste collection. This is subcontracted to CityClean, and the excuses you describe are their responsibility, not the hung council. There is a potential discussion to be had around contractual obligations, however.
There are some shocking reports of people being massively abusive and violent in some cases towards binmen in Brighton, creating retention problems.
Whilst I don’t agree with Martha, picking on one councillor purely based on the colour of her politics; which is pretty inconsequential when it comes to local government, attempting to assign blame one way or another is pretty ineffectual at resolving an issue, in any situation.
Oh don’t make me laugh. Lefties always go on about so-called Tory austerity.
Take responsibility, austerity was started by Gordon Brown, when he bailed-out the banks, Fred the Shred and co.
The coalition government then inherited Labour’s mess.
In the same period of time, my council tax has virtually doubled.
What do I get for my money? A clueless Green-led council that gives the dustmen a huge (unjustified) payrise, and they still can’t be bothered to do their job.
Sack the lot of them, and get a contractor in.
The Greens are only interested in rolling out their dogma. They are not capable of practical solutions, or indeed working with a financial budget. They try to avoid scrutiny and sidestep democracy. They simply don’t care about ordinary residents and businesses – they refuse to listen to criticism. They are destroying Brighton with their mindless schemes. They are unfit to hold public office. Brighton deserves so much better.
However, I read the other day that Biffa employees who do the rubbish in Wealden and who also had a significant pay rise last year after a strike are now considering another strike because of ‘bullying tactics by management’. So, it doesn’t seem to matter whether the operatives are council-employed or employed by contractors when the common denominator in both types of operation is the GMB.
Yes, personally i think we aught to get the national government to run Brighton to save us from 4 more years of clueless local government, i’m seriously thinking of witholding my council tax or to insist it goes where i want it to go, which would be mainly to clean up the town, and insist the police crack down on graffiti. I think the lady from Westdene knows what she’s got to do!
A few years ago, there was much fanfare to a new Deputy Director (a woman, forget her name) who was taken-on to ‘sort-out’ the problems with cityclean, on a huge salary, no-doubt with a nice gold-plated pension.
So where is she now, and what has she been doing????
Filing her nails????
Rachel Chessaud
While watching Netflix?
Lots of missed collections in Woodingdean, too. You can log a missed collection online but making a formal complaint is ridden with obstacles! I guess Brighton and Hove City Council don’t want too many complaints on the books. The planned refuse and recycling collections have never been so patchy.
One thing the Greens are good at is spending money. Other people’s money. Taxpayer money . We are now paying an eye-watering £13m for the new bike hire scheme. In times of financial hardship for the Council, who signed this off and why has there been no scrutiny? Under Green stewardship, BHCC is not fit for purpose
Yes. If you want basic services – there’s no money in the kitty.
Anything to do with bikes, and they always find the money.
I wouldn’t consider writing an email “ridden with obstacles” personally. Have you read the latest housing report?
There are so many Labour councillors who are funded or belong to the GMB union I wonder if it’s a coincidence that strikes happen under other administrations.
In 2020 an inquiry found “bullying, misogyny, cronyism and sexual harassment are endemic within the GMB,”
The councillors who had belonged to the GMB for years had failed to notice any of it
Luckily for Cllr Bageen he does not live in his ward so is spared from the experience. As he can’t vote for himself in his ward hopefully he’ll consider voting Independent to get things done.
There’s no point voting Labour, because they’re all union members, and issues like this will just get ignored.
They don’t want to upset their union paymasters.
Also, don’t forget; the leader of the Labour party is a Knighted, multi-millionaire, champagne-socialist.
You couldn’t make it up….
You always appear to turn everything into a jaded attack towards political parties, even though the things you describe rarely affect the local level.
Comments like “union paymasters” are unfortunately a disingenuous attempt at a misaligned reality, devoid of substance.
The problems stem back to 2015 under the then Labour Council, whose contract with Brighton & Hove, states; ‘We will make collecting refuse, increasing recycling & cleaning the streets a top council priority. The Leader & senior councillors will directly oversee work to improve the service’.
Unfortunately this never happened & the position is clearly not satisfactory under the current administration.
May 4th & electors will have the option of ridding the City of the Green/Labour coalition & to vote some sensible & pragmatic councillors to sort out the basics.
The Labour head honcho somehow got knighted for being a truly terrible Director of Public Prosecutions, and apparently doesn’t like using the title, but he has it and he did accept it, come what may. Anyone with an ounce of genuine leftie principle would have declined the knighthood.
I do have a massive problem with all these councillors and candidates being menbers of unions whuich are bringing the rest of us to our knees. One of the Lab candidates in Kemptown said that she was PROUD to be a member of the GMB. Why?
Once upon a time I was an employee of an ex-public sector organisation and the company decreed that there was now a closed shop and we must all join the union. Subs to the GMB were deducted from our pay automatically. Quite a few of us kicked back massively at this diktak, ignored strike orders of the GMB (in our particular area of the operation, there was nothing to strike about – we did not make boilers, were not municipal and didn’t know what ‘General’ was supposed to be. We were clerical and admin people, not militant, but very resentful about compulsory subs to this union shower). After a while the closed shop ended, but it does tell you how much power the leftie mob had/has over employers etc. This was back in the 1970s and one would have hoped life had moved on, but it obviously hasn’t. Councillors should be forced to leave whatever union they belong to and I will never vote for a union lackey.
Yes, now that Sir Keir Starmer is electioneering; he is all “Gor blimey Guv, I’m working class me; my old man’s a dustman”
Agree – any genuine lefty wouldn’t even consider a Knighthood.
Funny really, how the leaders of both (allegedly) so-called ‘liberal’ partys are Knights….
I’m afraid to tell you this, but Keir Starmer has no interest in the bin collection in Brighton. It’s the equiluminant argument of saying S. Robson Walton caring about what Doris in BWS in Asda is doing…guv.