View report page

Unwanted Household Effects
Since the war there has been a remarkable turnover in the purchase and disposal of
household furniture and fittings and the domestic refuse collection service became embarrassed
by the bulkiness of articles put out for disposal or, alternatively, abandoned on war damaged
sites and even on the highway. After a time the Council started to organise a service for the
removal of unwanted furniture and other items on payment of modest scheduled charges, but more
recently, because of the clear need for removal as a social service, this has been given free of
charge.
Trade Refuse
The Council is required on request to remove trade refuse on payment of appropriate
charges, and over 10,000 tons was removed during last year. Some of this is collected on the
normal household collection beats where the material produced is capable of being put in ordinary
household bins or alternatively in bulk containers.
STREET SWEEPING
It is becoming increasingly difficult to deal with the public cleansing of highways satisfactorily,
for three main reasons—firstly, the astonishing increase in light litter and the dropping
of this in the street despite the provisions of the Litter Act 1958; secondly, because of difficulties
caused by the growth of motor parking on the highway; and thirdly, because of the reluctance of
younger active men to enter this type of employment despite the offer of bonus incentives and
attempts to introduce mechanical appliances to make the work more attractive.
The service has recently been completely reorganised following a work study examination
and is now planned as follows:-
Manual Sweeping
The Borough is divided into 42 beats of which exactly half are three man team beats and
the remainder are worked by one man only in each case. The teams are based on sub-depots in
the Borough and their predetermined sweeping beats are related to these so that the greatest
number of sweeping miles are obtained. There are approximately 130 miles of road in the Borough.
Some lengths of road are swept continuously while others are swept twice daily.
Mechanical Sweeping
Unfortunately, mechanical sweeping does not provide the whole answer to labour problems
because the parked vehicle very materially lowers the efficiency of the mechanical sweepers.
There are objections to their use at night on noise grounds and night routes have to be carefully
selected and are necessarily confined to main roads.
Attention has also been given to the possible use of mechanical sweeping on footways
and a number of machines tried out. The greatest need for them is in shopping areas where the
denser pedestrian usage does not make their use easy without some risk. Progress is being made
in the development of footpath sweepers and the Council will avail itself of any machine which
can achieve a satisfactory result in the conditions under which it must work.
Street Markets
There are in the Borough a number of street markets mainly catering for the sale of
vegetables, fruit and flowers, but also other items from stalls. The largest of these markets is in
North End Road which contains some 91 stalls but the others are materially smaller and do not
present so great a cleansing problem. Large trailers are provided for the reception of refuse from
the market, three being located in side roads off North End Road. These are progressively filled
during the day and removed at night for emptying except on Fridays and Saturdays, an intermediate
emptying during these days being often necessary because of heavier trading. At the end of the
day there is always a quantity of litter left in the market area and special arrangements are made
to remove this with a small gang and a Dennis "Paxit" vehicle.
(95)