In previous years residents have always been given a calendar (see right) but some bright spark in the Labour administration quietly decided to ditch this important communication.
My residents might have approved of the saving if the council had actually told them about the decision, given the reasons and, oh yes, popped it on the website. Would it have been so difficult to include the news with the Council Tax notification?
Officers are unhappy as they fear this failure to communicate will simply create more work for them with a rise in residents' complaints.
One of my residents asked me what the dates were because without internet access he thought he was excluded from seeing the calendar. The reality is, everyone is in the dark. The new calendar isn't on the council website.
You might ask why does this matter? Well there are several reasons including:
- If you miss a grey bin collection, you've a whole fortnight to wait
- In hot weather your bin will really stink after 4 weeks, and you might have problems fitting all your rubbish in
- People may put their bins out at the beginning of the week to ensure they don't miss it being emptied
- Not only is this ugly, but having wheelie bins on the pavement causes problems for the partially sighted and those with mobility issues, as well as people pushing buggies
- Readings recycling rates have been going down. Labour needs to encourage people by at the very least making it easy to know when collections are going to be made
Pull your collective finger out Reading Labour, get the calendar for grey, red and green waste collections published and include an apology for your failure to communicate!
