Councillor Mark Reen and I spent a couple of hours this morning with Bob Coombs, our Envirocrime Enforcement Officer. Bob has been with the council for 16 years and is currently responsible for the Northfield and Elthorne wards. Bob covers everything from abandoned vehicles, through graffiti and fly-tipping to skip licences. About half of his time is spent directly dealing with complaints from members of the public. He is also responsible for monitoring the effectiveness of ECT across this area. If you don’t know ECT is the contractor that provides street cleaning, refuse and recycling collection and fly-tipping removal in Ealing.
We had a chat with Bob over a cup of tea and then headed out into the ward to see what we could find.
Our first stop was a bin bag outside the cafe we had just stopped at on Northfield Avenue. A quick look inside revealed that it had come from an adjacent solicitor’s office. We trooped in and talked to one of the solicitors who was not really as embarrassed as he might have been. On Carlyle Road we had a word with some builders who were using the pavement to store waste before a skip arrived. Following up on a complaint from a lady in Chandos Avenue we looked at another flytip at the east end of the street. More rummaging revealed that one of the flats above the shops on South Ealing Road was being refurbished and the owner was dumping outside. From there to Hessel Road where another rummage delivered up the address of a shop that is To Let – presumably the owner cleared out the rubbish and dumped it on the street opposite. These look like two more good locations for Ealing’s roving flytip spy camera (see pictures from the east end of Graham Road taken in May and published in the July edition of Around Ealing).
To be fair to the council and its contractor ECT, most of the roads we traversed this morning were looking pretty clean. Where there was mess it was due to fly-tipping on the whole.
Your three Northfield councillors are committed to helping Bob make a real difference in this ward. One of us will be out on the streets with him every month.
We can all do our bit. If you see abandoned vehicles, uncollected rubbish or recycling, fly-tipping or graffiti, in fact anything that looks a mess call the council on 020 8825 6000. It may be a little laborious to record the problem but we can’t clean the place up if we don’t have the information.
See previous posting.
Phil Taylor 