20 more pan borough salt bins to be provided
By aloquifique | Tuesday, December 07, 2010, 19:05
Wandsworth Council has today announced their their scheme to put salt bins in key locations across the borough proved very successful. In fact, so successful that they are now saying, 'having proved useful for residents the council will now be doubling the number of bins to 40'.
-
Salt Bins in Tooting via tootinglife.com
There is no word as to the location of these new salt bins, only to say that they will be placed in areas that are most badly affected by icy weather like hilly parts of the borough, near schools, hospitals and old people's home.
Transport spokesman Cllr Ravi Govindia said "The 20 bins we had put out before last week's cold snap have proved enormously popular which is why we are now going to double their number."
During last week's cold snap, the gritting operation ran continuously for 84 hours and during that time, more than 400 tonnes of grit were spread. Just not in Balham.
Comments
Welcome To Balham, Gateway To The South...Pole
I'm not surprised Tory Wandsworth Council says their pathetic allocation 20 salt bins 'proved enormously popular'. It's an example of political euphemism that would make Nick Clegg blush.
According to their own estimates the population of the borough is now 284,000 people. On average that's one 'self-service' salt-bin per 14,200 people (none of which were located in Balham according to their map). There was also no sign of them being refilled as promised on their website once they had been (very quickly) emptied.
Coupled with their woeful road-gritting program this resulted in many Wandsworth side-streets becoming extremely icy and dangerous, especially in Balham which seemed to have been completely bypassed in their plans.
I witnessed many people falling victim to the treacherous frozen pavements and slipping over.
In an area which has a large population of families with small children and vulnerable elderly people this ridiculous salt-bin allocation is verging on negligence.
Wandsworth Council's failure to provide this service in Balham also resulted in people coming across the Lambeth border and depleting their amply provided bins (in Lambeth's Thornton Ward alone there are 17 bins provided http://tinyurl.com/35wg5mw ). It shows for one thing that Wandsworth's low Council Tax rates result in poorer public services - even though Lambeth's are in my opinion still too high.
Wandsworth's doubling of the number of self-service salt-bins will still only provide on average one bin per 7,100 people. Is this acceptable?
Should my 89 year old neighbour have to rely solely on the good-will of her neighbours just so she can walk to the shops without fear of slipping over and breaking a bone? I don't think so.
Buck up your ideas Wandsworth and stop putting people at risk.
By DoktorWatson at 20:10 on 07/12/10
Report