Dumped on by Brent Council

 

Oh dear, boxes dumped in Brent, outside 226A Chapter Road, NW2 in fact. The name and address on them is an address within NW11 in Barnet.

You can guess what happened next. A Fixed Penalty Notice to a Mr Spring (not his real name).

This came with a lovely invite for a chat under PACE, the Police and Criminal Evidence Act.

 

 

Mr Spring hadn't dumped the boxes, he didn't know anything about them, other than the fact that his name and address was on them, as he hadn't purchased the mattresses, they were purchased by a family member and when they were delivered he was abroad. He contacted Brent Council and thought the matter would quickly be resolved (not when there is money involved!):

 

"The photographs show that the incident in question relates to a delivery that was made to my house in my absence. I was out of the country at the time and another family member was present to take delivery. We paid to have the packaging taken away (see attached email) so did all we could to discharge our Duty of Care. We could not have expected the waste to have been dumped illegally. I would therefore respectfully ask that the Fixed Penalty Notice is cancelled."

 

This wasn't quite accurate but understandably so. The buyer didn't pay to have waste removed as Eve, the mattress people, were actually paid to remove the old mattresses. If they were dumped they don't carry your name and address.

 

In fact, the boxes never entered the delivery property, as they were brought in like this, only in the plastic.

 

Did Brent listen to reason? No, of course not, this is all about the money.

The underlining is by Mr Mustard.

Mr Spring is not the owner of the waste. It never entered his property.

Waste being connected to you doesn't mean that it breaches this law.

The waste was not produced on the property occupied by Mr Spring.

 

The response is a blind, it bends the facts and is only intended to bully a resident into paying £120 (or £200 later on) rather than risk going to the Magistrates' Court and getting a criminal record. The chances of that happening to Mr Spring are very low indeed (Mr Mustard is not a lawyer but just look at the facts for yourself) as he wasn't even in the country when the delivery was made and he didn't place or pay for the order, a fact that he hasn't yet told Brent Council but they can read it here as the blog will be tweeted to the council and the CEO.

 

Of course it doesn't help that Eve has since called in the Administrators as they had financial problems and Bensons for Beds are now selling Eve mattresses but won't be liable for their debts. If anyone dumped the boxes it was the delivery company, which is usually a contracted out service (The 2021 Annual Report says that Eve Sleep operated an 'outsourced manufacturing and fulfilment model'). What Mr Mustard surmises happened is that the delivery company got to the next delivery, put the boxes on the pavement whilst they got the next delivery out then simply forgot to pick them up. Whatever happened Mr Spring is innocent.

Before starting a Magistrates' Court case the legal department of the council will put Mr Spring on notice and at that point a proper lawyer, without an interest in the outcome, and with a duty to assist the Court, should look objectively at the facts, which can be backed up by paperwork, and sling this FPN into the rubbish (and then hope the council disposes of it properly otherwise the whole merry-go-round will start again).

 

Oh dear, Brent Council have form for their actions on dropping litter, see this article.

https://www.kilburntimes.co.uk/news/21960854.brothers-two-year-battle-brent-council-litter-fine-not-vexatious-says-ico/

 

End.

Update: 9 November 2022

 

Before the pro bono lawyer (always very busy helping the public for free) had read all of the papers the council had decided yesterday to cancel the FPN. This was after they had been emailed proof that Mr Spring was out of the country and wasn't the buyer. Their cancellation was not gracious, the writer probably spent the afternoon crying over the loss of revenue, it included these words:

Thank you for your email and the extra information that you have provided.

Based on your version of events, I have decided, on this occasion, to cancel the fixed penalty notice.

Mr Spring's version of events is the truth as demonstrated by independently produced documentation. 'On this occasion' as if he has ever littered before and it will be a decade before he needs a new mattress.

Councils could be more gracious when an innocent member of the public is being written to. The lack of good manners which is often evident in parking departments is equally apparent here.

Barnet Council propose a green bin tax

Hat tip to Mr Reasonable who assiduously reads council papers and then puts them to the sword if they don't make sense. You can read his excellent blog here. The above snippet is from the papers for the Environment Committee this Wednesday 28 November. Note the 6.30pm start (not the usual 7pm).

Update: 29 November 18. Mr Mustard attended the entire three hour Environment Committee meeting yesterday evening save for the first few minutes as traffic was awful in High Barnet and he couldn't escape. He missed a fraction of the first item about the bin fiasco. Later in the evening four conservative councillors out of 6 expressed reservations about the £50 green bin charge and then voted to go out to consultation on it. Bonkers. Mr Mustard presumes they want residents to give it a good kicking in the consultation so they can say they listen to the will of the people and proceed to make a different stupid decision.

Barnet Council worry more about saving money than value for money. The bin collection service is one that every council has to deliver by law to collect 'household waste' without charge. Doubtless lawn trimmings and the like come outside of that definition and hence why charging is being considered and as other councils have managed to introduce charges for it.

Mr Mustard wondered if the proposed charge was a fair one and to be fair he felt it had to be the actual collection cost + the green waste disposal cost.

He collected the statistics he needed.

Total cost of all waste collection in Barnet is budgeted at £5,909,350

There are 147,063 dwellings.

50% of dwellings have a green bin.

Thus an estimated 73,500 green bins

The North London Waste Authority processed 19,666 tonnes of green waste for Barnet last year.

The gate fee for green waste has been estimated at £60 a tonne.

If only 50% of households have a green bin and the collection frequency is half that of the blue & black bins, for every 100 blue or black bins being collected, there are 25 green bin collections.

Thus the collection cost of green bins is 25/225 of £5,909,350 = £656,594

The annual collection cost of a single green bin is £656,594 / 73,500 = £8.93

The average tonnage per green bin is 19,666 / 73,500 = 0.267 tonnes

Disposal cost of green waste per bin per year = £60 * 0.267 = £16.05 (but see below)

Total green bin costs per year per bin is £8.93 + £16.05 = £24.98

So why do the council plan to charge £50 which is twice the actual cost?

Mr Mustard has over-estimated the costs in the council's favour.

The annual running cost of £5.9m includes collection of food waste which no longer takes place and was intended to save £300,000

The annual running cost includes the collection of waste from businesses.

He has probably over-stated the cost to dispose of green waste. The green waste tonnage included that generated from parks.

If this idea comes to fruition lots of residents will stop having their green waste collected. That will make the collection of lower quantities less economic and rounds will need to be changed again. Bin wars will start and bins with a payment disc on them being 'borrowed' by naughty neighbours. Grass clippings will be dumped into any bin left on or near the pavement at night. Green waste will be put into the bottom of the black bin, under general waste, where it won't be spotted as bins are emptied. Green waste will be dumped all over the borough No-one can prove who put it there unless caught in the act.

What is the point of a council? 

To provide services, such as green waste recycling, to residents at a lower cost than they could arrange it for themselves.

How is this funded?

By council tax, a universal payment roughly related to usage of local services.

How does this benefit society?

Will council tax go down?

No, this extra fee is a disguised council tax, you will pay more for the same services.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

Update: Mr Mustard was just throwing away his council tax leaflet for 2013/14 having decided to recycle his 2013 Barnet Council archive box (that will get the recycling rate up) when he noticed something. The budget for Waste Collection back then was £6.36m i.e. £400,000 more than currently, and there was a separate payment of £9.76m to the North London Waste Authority.

Therefore, the costs that the council would save by making you pay for your green waste collection are only £8.93 per bin per year for which they want to extract five times as much from you the long suffering council tax payer.

In all the circumstances Mr Mustard does not see how an extra charge of £50 can be justified.

He also sees what good value we get from our in-house service.

Double trouble with percentages

First off we had the council issuing a press release that 99% of libraries now have free wifi (which isn't really anything to boast about in 2013 in any case). The only trouble is that one library doesn't have it and so only 13 out of 14 libraries have email which equates to 93% and to think that Robert Rams is allowed to take part in big decisions which affect us all is quite worrying. It isn't as if he shows any sign of being bothered about accuracy "I'm happy with it". Will voters be equally happy with him in May 2014? we'll see.

sorry this is somewhat out of focus

and now I see from twitter that Robert has been out today and seen the new blue wheelie bins being delivered. Mr Mustard thinks that the council have not readied themselves for the storm of protest they are about to receive when people actually try and find a home for this third 240 litre bin.

Here is some blurb about it on the council website. So you already have a green bin and a black bin, both of which are 240 litres in size. Your green bin has been halved in usefulness as it will only be collected every other week from October.

Now the council say that more than 30% of the typical bin is food waste (not at Mustard Mansions - probably only 1% and he doesn't believe this statistic anyway) and so they have spent loads of our money on new food waste bins and a collection service (careful buying and cookery classes might be more useful) and of course this new food bin will be the correct size, won't it? Let's see:

240 litres * 30% food = a 72 litre sized bin is needed.

Food Bin being supplied is 23 litres.

What is the point? or is some officer also unable to work out percentages?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The May Gurney slalom course

Winter is coming (sorry) and you will be able to practice your slalom technique on the course that May Gurney are preparing on every pavement in Barnet. Here are two photographs taken near Mustard Mansions yesterday, one by Mr Mustard and one by a friend who lives a little way up the street.

Caught in the non-act

looking the other way; standard May Gurney operating procedure

What chance does a blind person stand, someone in a wheelchair, a double pushchair or even a single, the postman, the meter reader, elderly or disabled members of the public? This sort of stupidity should be stopped. Before May Gurney arrived all of those bins were in the front gardens of the houses.

Mr Mustard tweeted those photographs and a Brunswick Park resident sent him a message:

Hi,

Saw your twitter picture this morning about the May Gurney recycling collections and it reminded me that I've been wanting to rant for a while. (Mr Mustard loves a good rant)

Several months ago, all was well with our recycling collections - we put stuff out in the proper boxes, it was collected. Then something changed - we noticed that a lot of the recycled plastic was suddenly being left behind rather than taken away. I checked carefully, and everything left was properly stamped with the recycleable logo. I carried on leaving stuff out, and it kept being ignored.

Finally, I caught the collectors one week, and tackled them on it. In poor English they tried to explain that they couldn't take the plastic as it was 'the wrong shape'! Apparently, they can now only recycled plastic if it's shaped like a bottle.. words fail me. I was handed a small (May Gurney branded) sheet that explained what could and couldn't be recycled, explaining that only plastic 'bottles' can be taken.

I can understand restrictions on what can be recycled - some plastics are not recyclable. But never have I heard of restrictions being based upon 'shape'.

As I assume our waste has a value to the recycling company (and hence to the Council in terms of contract value?) I just cannot understand why a green policy isn't being followed here.

I thought you might like to highlight this absurd policy on your website as I'm sure many people would be surprised know that money is being thrown away in this manner. Delighted to assist.

Regards,

Now Mr Mustard does believe that the "leader" of the council Richard Cornelius has gone into print saying that no-one has really noticed that recycling has been outsourced. Poppycock Richard, it is just that most people can't get the energy up (unlike Mr Mustard) to complain especially when it is a case of the wrong shaped plastic (could you make it up, is it like that in CWAC quack land?)

Mr Mustard went off and checked the Barnet Council website and it does indeed say bottle shaped plastic only. Did it always say that, Mr Mustard wasn't sure and then he remembered the short hammy film "starring" Cllr Harper. Here it is all over again, luckily only 1m55s.

So there we are, nothing sinister going on and it has only ever been plastic bottles that can be recycled and as it happens the price of plastic has plummeted recently. Why you can't put out other plastic which has a logo on it showing that it can be recycled is one of those eternal mysteries. When we get the new wheelie bin for co-mingled waste things will be different? (they will because no-one will be able to see what is at the bottom of your bin!).

Now back to the main event of May Gurney very dangerously leaving the bins on the pavement. What Mr Mustard wants to know is whether Richard Cornelius doesn't know the service is cr*p because

a. he goes around with his eyes shut

b. he believes the officers who tell him things are hunky-dory

c. he doesn't care

d. he believes everything he himself says

e. the contract comes to an end soon and no-one can be bothered with it

f. he doesn't want to have to question the current One Barnet outsourcing plans based on past factual failures

g. his newspaper columns are ghost written

h. any non libellous idea you may have

May Gurney must be doing that self-monitoring nonsense which is going to be the way of the monster One Barnet contracts as only a thin client will remain who don't have enough time to do the job properly.

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard

The Cabinet talks rubbish

On Wednesday at 7pm the Cabinet ( the gang of ten who make all the important decisions )  will discuss the following report.

Waste Collection Options

Mr Mustard is a little concerned as the top officer name on this report is the Assistant Director, Mrs Lynn Bishop. She wrote the following to Mr Mustard about the income share on the May Gurney contract (the one that sees them getting a bonus of almost £1m p.a. just for doing their job )

Thank you for your email dated the 12^th December 2011,

As previously advised in an email to you on 13 April 2011 and again in June 2011, Barnet Council and May Gurney share the material income 50/50. Also as previously advised, May Gurney then use their share of the material income to reduce the annual contract price that Barnet Council pays to May Gurney for providing the recycling service. This paragraph was complete rubbish with Mrs Bishop confusing cost and cashflow which Mr Mustard found very worrying. Above a certain figure May Gurney receive half of the money from the sale of recycled materials. So it is correct to say "their share" but completely wrong to say "to reduce the annual contract price" because they don't. What happens is that an estimate of the value of recycled materials is taken off the estimated fees for the year to give a net position which is then paid across 12 months with a settling up at year end.

The income per tonne of £33.11 that was reported to the meeting of the Budget and Performance Overview and Scrutiny Committee on 6 December 2011 relates to the income that Barnet Council receives.

Mr Mustard knew the answer before he asked the question. He wondered if the AD understood and found that she doesn't. A bit worrying when she is in charge of rubbish. Mr Mustard does not let mistakes like that pass him by. He asked Mrs Bishop to explain more clearly and there was a sudden delegation to CS who obviously knows what he is on about despite being much lower in the food chain and here was the real explanation.

Barnet Council's Recycling Services contract with May Gurney allows for the sharing of income from the sale of recyclable materials collected from households, schools and recycling banks. Within the contract, May Gurney retains the initial income from the sale of materials. The annual contract price that the Council pays to May Gurney for providing the services is then reduced by the same amount. 50% of the income received by May Gurney for the sale of materials above this amount is paid to the Council, and May Gurney retains 50%. There are no specific tonnage targets, but the 50% share of income acts as an incentive to May Gurney to collect a greater tonnage of household materials for recycling, and to achieve the best price possible for these materials. No it doesn't; they cannot collect recycling that is not in the bins. It is a gift. Market prices for recycling dictate the prices achieved. Not your fault CS; I know you get told to spout this apology of a reason for a badly drawn contract.

The paths of Mr Mustard and Ms Cross have hardly crossed with the only occasion being when she replied quickly and accurately to an email that Mr Mustard had written to Ms Bishop about the Summers Lane site.

Mr Mustard come write a whole blog about Mr Lai about bin collections. The most recent episode for which Mr Mustard is still awaiting a reply is why the binmen were told to conspicuously photograph Mr Mustard's black bin before and after emptying. No other bin was photographed nor was any other bin in the street put back properly. Mr Mustard also has a camera which he wields frequently.

So Mr Mustard is only 1/3rd confident that the report on rubbish will not be.

So the plan is that each residence will have three 240 litre bins (the standard size of the green bin that we have now ) and a small lidded bin ( or caddy ) for in the kitchen to put food waste into and a larger food waste bin for outdoors. Terraced houses that front the street, like those in Chipping Close opposite the market, obviously can't take part and anyone with small gardens, many Victorian houses have small front gardens, will have their gardens stuffed full of bins. Do they need to be 240ltr size? No of course but in One Barnet, One Size fits all and even if it doesn't, it does! (Think pay by phone parking). 

Let us run through the bins

Green bin for green garden waste, lawn clippings and the like. There is no mention of home composting. Mr Mustard has a compost bin the size of a green bin and a set of 3 bins made out of pallets so that he can leave his waste to rot down. Mr Mustard's are a little more rudimentary than these but they all do the same job. Put that at the bottom of the garden out of the way and share with a neighbour if you get on well.

http://goodcheergarden.wordpress.com

Some people could manage without a green bin at all if they composted everything green and had a large enough rear garden. Mr Mustard's compost bin came free from the council for a home he had in another borough. It saves the council more than it cost to give him the bin.

Green stuff does not grow below 5° so why not restrict collection to the 6 months from 1 April to 30 September as for the other 6 months there are hardly any green bins to be seen on the street. This would almost halve the costs of collection. Why isn't the council bagging the green waste once composted and selling it at £1 a bag to local garden centres? Let the garden centres sell One Barnet Compost at £2 a bag for 30-40 litres and help the local economy. Proprietary compost is £5 for a 60ltr bag now.

Kitchen waste. Eat it (perhaps this explains Mr Mustard's expanding waistline) or compost it. A good idea to collect kitchen waste as apparently, in many houses, this is one of the biggest sources of waste. Once you see how much food you waste you might try buying differently in order to cut down on waste. Buy 3 looses apples if that it what you need rather than a bag. They are also cheaper loose than pre-packed. Compost used tea bags, apple cores, eggshells and uncooked organic matter. Just put cooked waste food in the kitchen bin. This bin will need to be collected weekly and the lid needs to be secure to stop scavenging pets and foxes.

Co-mingled dry waste. Mr Mustard remembers he was sent a link to a co-mingled waste plant by the Pinkham Way website and here it is.

We are to get another 240ltr wheelie bin for our dry recyclables; basically all the stuff we currently put into the blue and black boxes. This will be much quicker to collect but needs an expensive building full of clever machines and people to do the sorting. If there is a plastic label on the bins with pictures and words of everything that can go in these bins then this may well increase the amount of materials that are recycled.


Black other waste wheelie bin. The existing wheelie bins will remain. One used to be able to get 120ltr black wheelie bins but the council stopped giving them out. That was a retrograde step as old people liked them as they are easier to move around and also old people tend to generate less rubbish being from the made do and mend and/or less rampant users of consumer goods. Residents should be offered the smaller bin if they ask for it or if they are the only person in the household.

There are over 130,000 dwellings in  Barnet. The blue and black boxes will presumably be recycled but the blue boxes didn't appear all that long ago. What did the boxes cost as the purchase price is now going to be thrown away? Here are the values from the asset register for the last 2 years for the small bins:


At 31/3/2010 £1,836,406
at 31/3/2011 £1,322,283


so if we knock off another £500,000 depreciation for the year just ended there will be a residual write-off of £800,000 because the wrong strategy was chosen in 2008. 

it will be something like this outside your property

Mr Mustard thinks that to go the co-mingled route is fine but the collection cycles are over generous. Here is his suggestion


Food waste - weekly
Green waste - weekly but only for the 6 warmest months
Co-mingled - fortnightly
Leftover general waste - fortnightly alternating with co-mingled


Now let us look at the figures in the report. Can you follow them? The layout is a complete illogical mess. Mr Mustard would have liked the figures to have gone through the detail first and then presented a summary. He would have liked the next 5 years to be in a table showing all the costs first, then all the savings then the notional savings from costs that won't be incurred in future years due to the new plan (which aren't really savings at all).

It looks to Mr Mustard like the £206k in the table at the top of page 213 should be £201 as shown at the bottom of page 218. Let us see if that gets corrected.


A quick whizz through the report in order. 


1.1 Good idea. Encourage recycling.


1.2 Bad idea. Too many litres.


4.2 The actual percentages in a table would have been useful.


4.4 More madness, signing up to something for 25 years way after many councillors will no longer be.


6.1 Figures rather than percentages should be a table. 4% is the rate of inflation so no increase at all in real terms.


6.2 It doesn't clearly say what the "impact on performance" percentages are. One could conclude that will be the percentage improvement but more likely it is the % of waste that will be recycled.

6.3 Mr Mustard would like to subscribe to the One Barnet Wave it Goodbye phase. This Wave 2 is mentioned without Wave 1 having had a mention. Did Mr Mustard miss it?


6.8 50% We'll see.


9.1.4 Utter madness to have to estimate your future rubbish for 25 years if any penalties apply to being wrong.


9.5 Mr Mustard suggested this in his blog a little while ago.

9.6.1 One of the worst laid out tables ever seen. If the 3 categories had been used as headings within the table then the first column could have been done away with and the whole table would have fitted on one page. 


A face to face campaign is a good idea but it needs to be more effective than breakeven after 3 years. 


Clear instructions by direct mail to every household will cost £14,000. There are 130,000+ households so say 10p per household to produce literature and mail it out. Looks a bit tight.


Barnet First magazine will be the first item into Mr Mustard's co-mingled bin. It is shoved through the letterbox which clearly says "no junk mail" on it; that means if it doesn't have his name on it, he doesn't want it.


A clear sticker saying what you can recycle, stuck firmly and permanently on the bin is a top idea.


Adopt language of communications. ??????????????

Local monitoring...Haven't bin police been outlawed?

Pledge bank - which should itself have been recycled by now.


£210,000 for 130,000 bags. Mr Mustard will check the bill. This will have to go out to EU tender.


Thank you for reading. Maybe Mr Mustard will see you at the town hall on Wednesday evening at 7pm?

Yours frugally

Mr Mustard