Sorry for a post of mainly local interest. I do have local readers and may find some more with this. The same principle may well apply elsewhere in England.

I have received a letter from a local councillor forwarded from Keith Nicholson, Director of Public Places at Chelmsford Borough Council. This explains why my weekly refuse collection was cancelled yesterday, and there will not now be another collection for a whole week. The reason given is as follows:

The concern remains the ability to manoeuvre large vehicles safely on these estate roads and to avoid unreasonable risks to our workforce who are engaged in the loading activities.

This of course refers to the snow which fell here on Sunday night and Monday morning, about four inches in total as pictured here. It never got any thicker than this, and no more snow has fallen here since Monday. Today it is raining gently, washing away the remaining snow and ice, so that even the service road behind my house is nearly clear:

Unemptied bins, not much snow

Indeed on Wednesday there were still icy patches on some of the estate roads and pavements. This was not enough to stop commercial deliveries in large vehicles, e.g. to our local supermarket, which were continuing on very icy service roads even as the snow was falling on Monday. Probably more of a concern were the still very slippery pavements, which could indeed have been a danger to refuse collectors if they did not have suitable footwear.

I found this explanation quite reasonable until I read these words at the end of the letter, addressed to councillors:

Of course it goes without saying that we apologise to our customers for this disruption, but it is entirely out of our hands as I’m sure you will be able to explain if your are approached by any of your ward constituents

No, Mr Nicholson, this is not entirely out of your hands. Your council, indeed probably the department you head up, does the work to clear snow and ice off our roads (I think now under contract to Essex County Council). Your department could send out its workforce, otherwise unable to work at the moment, to clear the roads and pavements so that they could get on with their real job. If there are not enough workers or vehicles, that is not a matter entirely out of your hands, but a matter of your decision and your council’s not to allocate sufficient resources to cope with rather modest winter conditions. It is of course a matter of legitimate debate whether these resources should be kept in reserve for somewhat unusual bad weather. But this debate cannot be settled by a bald statement that the disruption is “entirely out of our hands”.

I spent a winter in Russia. Many readers of this blog are in cold parts of North America. They must find these excuses ridiculous. If the local authorities in those places abdicated their responsibilities by saying that the results of a few inches of snow are “entirely out of our hands”, then I don’t suppose refuse there would be collected between November and April.

At least Mr Nicholson’s letter offers some kind of apology. There is nothing apologetic at all in the announcement currently on Chelmsford Borough Council’s home page. I suppose a public apology quite literally “goes without saying”.

Refuse collection is a service which I pay for through my council tax. Will I receive a refund because this service has not been provided?

Here is the full text of Mr Nicholson’s letter, as forwarded to me and a large number of others with a request to give it publicity:

Councillors

Unfortunately we have had to cancel recycling and waste collections again today – Wed 4 February 2009

Despite leaving the assessment on whether to collect or not until mid morning today, ground conditions have not improved sufficiently to allow collections to take place

The problem remains with the estate roads and footpaths rather than the main roads and bus routes which are now largely clear. The concern remains the ability to manoeuvre large vehicles safely on these estate roads and to avoid unreasonable risks to our workforce who are engaged in the loading activities. The ‘on the ground’ assessment of selected routes this morning indicated that less than 20% of properties would be collectable and even this would require a judgement to be made by the collection vehicle driver for each individual road taking into account the potential risks. This is unrealistic. The other disadvantage with trying to undertake a partial collection is that this adds considerably to the uncertainty and confusion as to what collections have been made or are likely to be made and usually results in an adverse public reaction rather than a positive one.

In terms of contingency arrangements we now have to revert to ‘plan C’. In essence this means cancelling the Monday to Wednesday collections that have already been missed rather than attempting a catch-up and reverting to the normal collection days from Thursday onwards – assuming that collections will be possible tomorrow. This means that those properties that did not have a collection on Mon/Tue/Wed this week will have a ‘double’ collection at their next collection time for both refuse and recycling. This is now the most expedient way to recover the collection cycle. We are mindful also that further adverse weather is forecast for later this week – which could interrupt any ‘Saturday catch-up’ arrangements compounding the problem further.

The only variation to this will be that the brown bin garden waste collections scheduled for this week and week commencing 9th February will be cancelled. This will allow priority to be given and extra resources allocated to the ‘double collection of residual waste in the black bins and the extra volume of material from the recycling collections. Given the ground conditions experienced this week it is probably a reasonable assumption that volumes of green waste this week and next would be relatively low anyway. Normal brown bin garden waste collections will resume on Monday 16th February on week “A”.

The only other issue is that we will investigate the feasibility of adding an extra cardboard collection to those areas that may have missed the scheduled monthly collection to avoid a potential 8 week gap between these collections

The revised collection schedule can be found on the Chelmsford Borough Council website

Of course it goes without saying that we apologise to our customers for this disruption, but it is entirely out of our hands as I’m sure you will be able to explain if your are approached by any of your ward constituents

Keith Nicholson

Director of Public Places

www.chelmsford.gov.uk