Richard Baum

My battles with the Council’s Environmental Services Department continue. I don’t know if their sole purpose is to improve Bury’s environment, or whether it’s to annoy me so much that my brains explode and come dripping out of my nostrils. At the moment they seem to be neglecting the former but making a darn good go at the other thing.

Some time ago, after one complaint too many about the Prestwich litter mountain, Cllr Donal O’Hanlon and I came up with something which we thought might be an easy solution. We thought we’d ask for a sign in the Village so that people could know when the streets were cleaned. We weren’t talking about a sign made of uranium and visible from space. We weren’t talking about a sign carved from dodo bones or containing a buttock-print of President Bush. We were talking about a piece of paper stuck to a wall.

And yet despite the plan’s simplicity, the reaction of the Council was akin to us having asked them to re-route the M60 via Loch Lomond so that we could indulge in some fishing. They just weren’t budging.

Eventually, after taking this most tiny of issues to both Scrutiny and Full Council, we were promised our sign. Apromise was made to provide an information sheet in Prestwich Village so that local people could know when their streets were cleaned. We made it clear that what we wanted was something akin to the types of notices seen in service station toilets i.e. a sheet signed by the cleaner indicating when the cleaning was done. And bear in mind that this wasn’t a vanity exercise. It wasn’t that we wanted the Baum and O’Hanlon Legacy Sign. We were responding to some pretty desperate pleas from residents drowning in polystyrene burger boxes.

And last week, after only nine months of waiting (bear in mind that that is long enough for the Earth to travel three quarters of the way around the Sun…), an email arrived trumpeting the installation of our sign. I paid it a visit this evening, and when I saw it I wished to God Almighty that I could be hurtled towards the Sun at frightening speed, just so that my body could boil and I could escape the Council’s unending fungus-headed inadequacies.

Because unfortunately, the Council’s Chief Principal Senior Litter Sign Officer has been cut out of the loop somewhere, and there has been what can only be described as a tragic misunderstanding along the complicated road between my mouth and the Council’s ears. The sign that has been provided is completely inadequate. Using the sign provided to learn about when the streets were last cleaned is like trying to capture Shamu the Killer Whale using a jam-jar full of tap water. You could try forever but it’s just never going to happen.

The sign does not come close to doing what was agreed. In fact, it shows a distinct lack of effort, and when I saw it I was angry that local people’s wishes could be treated with such dismissive dis-respect. The Council clearly took our request, decided that it was far too much effort to enact, and so did the bare minimum possible to try and make us go away.

To save you a trip to Prestwich, I will describe it to you. It is a single A4 sheet of paper. There is no Council logo or Team Bury logo, and the heading says simply ”Prestwich Town Centre Route One,” followed by a list of streets and how often they are meant to be cleaned. It is completely meaningless. It’s like a teacher teaching Shakespeare by photocopying page 27 of Hamlet and telling his students to go away.

Nowhere obvious does it say what it is all about, who it is from or why it is there. Not only that but the type is tiny, and it is stuck on a library window which is shuttered off all evening, all night, and most of the weekend. It is completely unacceptable, and contravenes just about every corporate style guide and diversity requirement in the book. I would like to know who thought it was an acceptable way to provide information to residents.

It also does not do what it is supposed to do - namely alert local people to how often their streets have been cleaned. It describes when they are supposed to be cleaned, but the whole point is that local people are not convinced that the standards are being met. This sign is to help show local people that the standards are being met, not simply what they should be. Why such an obvious requirement could not be fulfilled is enough of a conundrum to make me shake my head so violently from side to side that it could snap off at any moment. And oh, how I wish it would. 

To give a better idea of what local people require, I have mocked up a sheet and sent it to the Council’s Executive Member for Environment, the Director of Environmental Services, and a few other people who might be able to drum up enough brain-stem activity to accomplish what’s required. It’s to be signed by the operative each time the streets are cleaned, with a time next to the signature. Then they will know that, yes, the Longfield Centre was cleaned three times today. Or they’ll see that it wasn’t, and they’ll know who to call. I think it would improve public perception of Council street cleaning, provide better information for residents, and perhaps help reduce litter if it becomes clear just how often the streets are being cleaned. The Council obviously disagree, and think that none of that needs to happen, or that it can be achieved using a badly photocopied scrap piece of whatever tatty junk they blu-tac to the library.

I have included in my draft some explanation of the purpose of the sheet, and a space for contact details, and a suggestion that it is printed larger than A4 size, and in a better place like the new (and excellent) noticeboard near the Retreat Fountain.

With any luck we’ll get somewhere this time. Since I’ve done the Council’s job for them and all they have to do is press “Print,” if we don’t get somewhere I might just give up the whole charade and go and live in the desert somewhere. And no-one wants that. I look horrific in beach wear.

Rick