One of Kenweb's regular contributors has seemingly made a personal crusade out of cleaning up the borough, for which they should be applauded naturally, but if people are determined to bombard the council with 20 or so e-mails or phonecalls a day pointing out grotspots there are a few things to bear in mind.
Firstly, the council is not psychic. A brief description of where a photograph is depicting a grotspot is a fairly basic necessity, for example:
'To whom it may concern, there is a sofa dumped in the alleyway between Smith Street and Jones Street, Accrington. It is situated behind the back gate of number 54 Jones Street. Please could someone arrange to have it removed?'
Secondly, the bin men will clear the alleyways of most items of rubbish which have been dumped when they come for the general refuse collection. It is not necessary to report smaller items such as general litter or black bin liners because they will automatically be cleared from back alleyways. If items such as these are reported then officers are duty bound to inspect the site and it takes up many valuable man hours which the council cannot realistically afford so it is ultimately not helpful.
Any flytipping should be described reasonably to determine whether any special protective wear is needed by the cleansing team, for example:
'To whom it may concern, there is an instance of flytipping behind 54 Jones Street in Accrington. The rubbish consists of some builders' rubble, paint tins and smashed glass.'
By all means use the Enquiries service and as a council we welcome residents pointing out such things but there is a helpful way and an unhelpful way of reporting grotspots. Regrettably, the barrage of communications from one member over the past few days are verging on the uphelpful purely because of the way they have been reported.
The Enquiries line is 01254 388111 and the email address is
[email protected]