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And so it begins.... the fly-tipping in a loch


Frances144
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Getting rid of the skips was just another stupid idea by wir officials.  I believe the skip contract wis only £60,000 per year, If they sacked the high paid official who came up wi da idea da Council wid probably have saved more!! 

Not exactly.  There were issues with people putting dangerous things  in the skips.  Meanwhile getting rid of high paid council officials is a bit like getting turkeys to vote for Christmas.  Is never going to happen as long as those officials can prevent it.

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I see there is a load of old kitchen units and pallets dumped on Saxa Vord Hill.

 

Why is it that only the sensible amongst us could see what would happen and the councillors chose just to ignore the issue that would arise?

Report it to the council with description and exact location.  Reckon they are responsible for removing fly tipped rubbish even though they can charge and prosecute the person who put it there if they can find them.  Just a thought.......this is not the start of a New Year bonfire is it?.

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It is not the council that is dumping this rubbish, and if someone can take the trouble to drive to Saxa Vord to dump rubbish, they could drive it elsewhere. It is the attitude of the residents that could be questioned, or businesses saving on fees. It was reported that dangerous items were being put into skips, also businesses were filling them as a way of saving money for themselves. The council could not just dump the dangerous waste as it could be subject to huge fines, so the cost of the skips was far more.

The council would be duty bound to segregate the waste, the risk to staff doing this would be increased. Add to that, not everyone got the full use of the skips, the one in Lerwick near the Knab Road junction would be filled within hours during the day.

 

Though, looking at the whole picture, there has been two reported dumping of waste in 5 months on here. One could comment, £30,000 each!

Edited by shetlandpeat
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It is not the council that is dumping this rubbish, and if someone can take the trouble to drive to Saxa Vord to dump rubbish, they could drive it elsewhere. It is the attitude of the residents that could be questioned, or businesses saving on fees. It was reported that dangerous items were being put into skips, also businesses were filling them as a way of saving money for themselves. The council could not just dump the dangerous waste as it could be subject to huge fines, so the cost of the skips was far more.

The council would be duty bound to segregate the waste, the risk to staff doing this would be increased. Add to that, not everyone got the full use of the skips, the one in Lerwick near the Knab Road junction would be filled within hours during the day.

 

Though, looking at the whole picture, there has been two reported dumping of waste in 5 months on here. One could comment, £30,000 each!

twice i have drove through brae and saw stuff left at the side of road both times close to where the road bends at the co-op .how often has it been left that i haven't seen?how often in other areas ?

Edited by fionajohn
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Well yes maybe the Saxa Vord dumpers could drive somewhere else.......or maybe they couldn't drive anywhere else to dump rubbish.  Well nowhere legal for them to go if they only have an isles car since rubbish now has to be taken to Lerwick.  But since the council will collect bulky waste for a fee that still does not excuse dumping.

 

But sadly the council still has some sort of responsibility to clear up after fly tippers so best just report anything dumped. 

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Perhaps an FOI to ask how much it is costing the council to clear up these deposits, they would, I guess also contain hazardous waste and would need to be sorted. Even if a business case was in favour of a return of the skips in remote areas, how would you stop those who fill the skips with dangerous substances and from the skips filing in half a day excluding those who have to work from using them.

Still, one other possibility is give areas small pots of money and allow them to spend on their local needs. We have a system here that has started to work like that. We fund things that would find it difficult to attract funding from other bodies. The same pot could fund local events. This would have to be allocated by the local councillors, parish and district and ideas suggested by the public in those immediate areas. Once bodies or groups have grant funding, it can attract other grants, it takes a little vision and work though.

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FOI, while potentially good in theory means in practice that a council or other body has to spend money to accurately calculate the costs or alternatively just to make a guess,  Anyway the bulk uplift scheme replaces skips at a very reasonable cost so no real excuse to fly tip.

 

Still wonder if this is a bonfire for some time in the future.  Always possible.

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Councils keep data that is to hand, there will be cost codes they will search, they will already have an officer who deals with FOI requests.

The cost of the FOI would be quite small compared to the use the information can bring. Departments sometime do not match costings via the codes. However, if there is no reasonable cost to consider with the illegal dumping of waste, I would understand.

 

For instance, if the Police were to search for types of crime in a certain area, it is an easy job. It is the number of FOI requests that can burden a council or other public body. Many are businesses fishing for gaps in the market they could fill. Asking for the number of rateable properties over £5k and the like.

It can also be the only way you could glean info from the public body.

 

 

 

I suppose, it depends on how much folk want the skips.

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Getting rid of the skips was just another stupid idea by wir officials.  I believe the skip contract wis only £60,000 per year, If they sacked the high paid official who came up wi da idea da Council wid probably have saved more!!

I believe that we should follow the example of the Wiltshire Council and axe from the top. If the skip contract only cost £60,000 per year, then axing a top officials job would be a saving of 3 years skip costs. We could then have skips to put the fiddles in that were taken from the childrens music lessons.

"Give me your tired, your poor,

Your huddled masses yearning to breathe free,

The wretched refuse of your teeming shore.

Send these, the homeless, tempest-tost to me,

I lift my lamp beside the golden door!"

 

The above "The New Colossus" has reference to our dumping problem. Unfortunately the lamp may be out, due to cuts.

Regards,

Rex.

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FOI, while potentially good in theory means in practice that a council or other body has to spend money to accurately calculate the costs or alternatively just to make a guess,  Anyway the bulk uplift scheme replaces skips at a very reasonable cost so no real excuse to fly tip.

 

Still wonder if this is a bonfire for some time in the future.  Always possible.

 

You are joking, aren't you?  "a very reasonable cost"?  From memory and from a couple of chats with old mates, they are more expensive than at least one London borough!

 

It ISN'T working.  Several household appliances are left outside council dwellings that I know of, creating an eyesore ... they've been there for months.  Some folk are dumping bulky items in others communal collection points meaning normal household waste is left outside causing additional work for the dustbin collection staff.  Me thinks it might only be a matter of time before a rather expensive repair job on the cart.

 

I never understood why the SIC delegated to the community councils re the skips.  The community councils didn't exactly monitor their skip sites, often with items left after collection which had fallen out of the skips.  You would have some skips full within less than 1/2 a day and yet another a few miles up the road totally empty.

 

Decrease the collection cost and it might result in more people using it and less (hopefully) fly tipping.

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Unlinkedstudent wrote

You are joking, aren't you?  "a very reasonable cost"?  From memory and from a couple of chats with old mates, they are more expensive than at least one London borough!

 

I am talking about what the council charges individuals to collect bulky items and £30 for up to 6 items (£10 for people on benefits) seems reasonable to me.  And you can get together with neighbours to make up the 6 items to cut costs.

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Thirty quid for a collection is far from reasonable, I didn't pay that in the first place for most of the items I might end up needing to use the service for. Six for the money is better, but what are folk supposed to do with the collection while they wait for it to rack up to the six....if you have the misfortune to be living in an SIC owned abode you run the risk of nasty letters from Housing if you store them in your so-called garden, and there's no place else for it to go unless you make a pile in the corner of the living room.

 

As far getting together with neighbours, nice thought, but in practice not so easy. Again if you have the misfortune of living in a council abode, chances are by the time you've ruled out the neighbours who refuse to speak to you on principle, and the ones you want nothing to do with, the potential candidates for cooperation are few and far between.

 

The Skips, while very helpful, were never ideal, and did not completely eliminate fly tipping. Had someone with half a brain thought up a system for bulky waste collection, it could have been done far more cheaply and effectively from day one. All it would have taken was to identify a number of suitable dump sites in each Community Council area, old disused quarries are aplenty, would have been ideal, and most were already being used for such anyway. Let folk get one with dumping in them, and send out a truck and loading shovel monthly or whenever to cart the lot off to the dump.

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As far as appliances, as suggested, are being dumped in gardens since the cessation of the skip service, this should have been dealt with via the supplier under WEEE. Similar to, as well other bulky items. I suppose, this is what you get for mail order, the council expected to foot the cost.

Shopping locally can solve that I would guess.

 

The comparison to London is a waste of typing, Shetland is not in London and everything has to be shipped on to the islands. And in cases, shipped off.

 

I wonder why communities have broken down so badly that folk do not talk to their neighbours.

Edited by shetlandpeat
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As far as appliances, as suggested, are being dumped in gardens since the cessation of the skip service, this should have been dealt with via the supplier under WEEE. Similar to, as well other bulky items. I suppose, this is what you get for mail order, the council expected to foot the cost.

Shopping locally can solve that I would guess.

 

WEEE is maybe fine and well where an item is purchased brand new and kept by the original purchaser until the end of its useful life, for pre-owned items that have been sold on, maybe more than once, its effectively useless. Electricals are just a small portion of the sum total involved though, furnishings are as likely to be involved and are in a large number of cases physically bigger than electricals.

 

I wonder why communities have broken down so badly that folk do not talk to their neighbours.

 

The public housing design and their allocation system, and many private houses being commuter homes these days for starters. Throw together random folk willy nilly to live on top of each other, make it impossible to do anything outdoors unless you're either in someone else's face, or someone else is in your's, and everybody being buddy, buddy is the stuff of fairy godmothers and their magic wands. Have folk that the only time they're home is a few hours some evenings and are only seen leaving or returning by car, and they either live in complete isolation to all their neighbours, or it takes a very long time for any sort of connection to become established, by which time a majority of them have usually sold up and moved on already.

 

The lack of community is no recent phenomena, it was alive and well in the Big Smoke on the banks of the Muddy Bay 40 years ago, the move away from building houses in rows to make streets, and opting for the cosy little groupings around squares or cul-de-sacs in bigger estates seemed to exacerbate the issue immensely.

Edited by Ghostrider
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All it would have taken was to identify a number of suitable dump sites in each Community Council area, old disused quarries are aplenty, would have been ideal, and most were already being used for such anyway. Let folk get one with dumping in them, and send out a truck and loading shovel monthly or whenever to cart the lot off to the dump.

Bit of a yes but.  We have such a place not all that far from where I live but too far for me to carry anything to so the £30/£10 option is actually far more use to me.  But of course a regular doorstep collection of bulk refuse would be even better.  Maybe something the council could consider once it has got its finances in order.

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