Hounslow council leader Steve Curran said he returned home to find 25-30 people and “dozens” of the recently-introduced wheeled bins blocking his front door.
The councillor said that the protest had left him with “no option but to call the police as I was being harassed and felt threatened”.
Protesters argue the “ugly” new bins are an unnecessary “blight” on terraced streets, but councillor Curran claims surveys have shown majority local support for using the containers, which are being rolled out to some properties instead of black sacks being left for collection by contractor SUEZ.
The protest follows a petition against the decision to introduce wheeled bins in Chiswick and Brentford, claiming the bins were “imposed on terraced streets at short notice and with absolutely no council consultation, despite council assurances that this would not happen”.
Guarantee
The petition – which was launched by local resident Gail Burza and closed on 21 November having gained 418 signatories – calls for a “guarantee” from the council that black bags will continue to be collected from houses which have chosen to opt-out of the wheelie bin scheme.
According to the petition, many streets in Chiswick and Brentford are small terraced houses with “tiny font gardens” that are “totally unsuitable to house a wheelie bin of any type”.
Petitioners say that “most residents take pride in their front gardens” and “do not want them blighted by a large, ugly wheelie bin”.
They also argue that residents do not need a wheelie bin as most residents in the area “recycle to a large extent and therefore have only one small bag of landfill rubbish per week, at most”.
The petition recalls previous campaigning by former Communities Secretary Eric Pickles to tackle “the scourge of bin blight” and “ugly clutter of unsightly bins, which ruin the look of families’ homes and gardens” in the UK (see letsrecycle.com story).
Hounslow council
However, in a blog post on the Hounslow council website entitled ‘My Week’, councillor Curran said that while as council leader “I take full responsibility for the decisions we take” it was “simply not appropriate for a crowd of people to heckle and barrack me at night outside the home I share with my family”, adding that the protest was “also not fair on my neighbours”.
He said that if residents inform the council they do not want their wheeled bin it will be removed, but that the borough-wide roll out of the bins followed positive comments from residents already using them and he urged residents with reservations about using them to “give them a go”.
Councillor Curran added: “To be absolutely clear on this, if we take away your wheelie when the council has assessed your property as being suitable for the new collection service, it then becomes a household’s responsibility to get rid of their rubbish. We will not collect any waste left out in black bags where households have refused to use their wheelie bins. You can take your rubbish to Space Waye the borough’s Hounslow’s re-use and recycling centre. Anyone found to be fly tipping will be prosecuted.
He added: “The borough-wide roll out of wheelie bins follows positive comments from residents already using wheelie bins. In a recent survey more than two-thirds of those who responded were satisfied with the service, and almost two thirds also agreed that their street was cleaner as a result of introducing the new service. I urge everyone with reservations about the new bins to give them a go.”
Hounslow is not the only council to incur the wrath of residents over the introduction of new collection containers. Blaenau Gwent council in Wales has also faced protests and a petition from local residents over the recent introduction of stackable ‘Trolibocs’ for kerbside-sort recycling (see letsrecycle.com story).
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