Residents in Cliftonville’s Athelstan Road and neighbouring streets Dalby Square and Ethelbert Road are living with “an unending” tide of “sanitary wear, soiled nappies, rotting food waste, cat litter and seagull guano distributed throughout the length of the street, peppering cars, homes and windows, with no end in sight.”
The issue is caused by the continually overflowing paladin bins, aggravated by the year-long problem of missing lids, and seagulls then ripping open exposed bags and scattering debris along the road and pavements.
In October 2020 paladin bins at the former car wash building end of the road were removed due to fly-tipping and overspilling waste on a daily basis. It was hoped that getting rid of the bins would solve the fly-tipping issue. Seagull proof bags and/or black wheelie bins were issued to residents and a twice daily removal of any rubbish at the site was put in place by Thanet council.
But residents say they are still plagued by streets filled with waste.
A spokesperson for the Athelstan Road tenants and residents association said: “The concern is that the atrocious state of Athelstan Road’s paladin bins – mid street and end of street – is not a unique, isolated situation, but is shared by streets to both sides of Athelstan Road – Dalby Square & Ethelbert Road – and how unspeakably obscene the long-term waste management status quo continues to be for the community.
“The community experiences an unending, outrageous situation: sanitary wear, soiled nappies, rotting food waste, cat litter and seagull guano distributed throughout the length of the street, peppering our cars, our homes, our windows, with no let up and no end in sight.
“It’s very concerning that it’s taken well over a year since such a supposedly basic issue – having paladin bins with missing/broken lids replaced – hasn’t been possible.
“The year-plus delay since initially reporting these bins as missing their lids is just bonkers – failure to provide such a very basic amenity – working communal bins – is beyond ridiculous.
“The communities on Athelstan Road, Dalby Square and Ethelbert Road are woken at approximately 4am every single day by dozens of habituated seagulls ripping up bin bags inside and surrounding the paladin bins, plus the bags of household waste dumped on the pavement.
“This cannot reasonably be described as anything other than totally unacceptable. This broken paladin bin issue must be resolved with the utmost urgency by those within TDC who are responsible,”
The waste issue is one that has been ongoing for a number of years. It prompted a Clean Up Cliftonville campaign by the Friends of Cliftonville Coastline in February 2020 and ARTRA and Cliftonville West ward councillors have repeatedly raised the problem with Thanet council.
Read here: The vile mess Athelstan Road residents have to put up with on a daily basis
Ward councillor Alan Currie said: “With regard to the missing communal bin lids, two out of three in Edgar Road have been replaced, the same in Athelstan Road. I have frequently requested that all the damaged bins are replaced.
“There have been a few different meetings between ARTRA, ward councillors, management and cabinet members over the last year where all issues were raised by Cliftonville West ward councillors. Subsequently changes to bin emptying and street cleaning was introduced on July 1.
“I have also requested that extra attention is focused on the communal bins in our ward which are under immense pressure from the increased amount of rubbish produced over the last two years. I have made regular checks on these communal bins and there has been an improvement.
“As all collections are made during the day some bins, especially at weekends, are full to bursting by the morning. However, most bins are emptied around 7am. Some residents have asked about an evening collection which would be more than welcome but resources are just not available for this service. Since 2015 there has been a 60% funding cut by the central government to TDC.
“Myself, Cllr Keen and Cllr Scobie continue to push for increased recycling in our ward and every week we issue extra bins and bags to local residents. We recently requested that sealed containers for recycling plastic bottles be issued for Cliftonville West as well as on the main beaches in Margate, Broadstairs etc.
“I can assure every resident that being a ward councillor in Cliftonville West is not a role for the faint hearted.”
In April this year Thanet council was awarded a grant of £50,000 as part of a pilot scheme to tackle fly-tipping.
The money, distributed by charity Waste and Resources Action Programme (WRAP), was earmarked to target fly-tipping hotspots at Athelstan and Ethelbert Roads through more enforcement, increased CCTV coverage and raising awareness.
The new project includes alleyway gating in Athelstan Road – with the opportunity to create a linear community garden- and CCTV.
The measures were requested by Athelstan Road Tenants & Residents’ Association (Artra) and then put forward by Thanet Multi-agency Task Force (MTF). A initial bid to the Home Office failed but was then secured through the WRAP scheme.
Thanet council said the aim was to increase prosecutions for fly-tipping but also to improve how the area looks and create more community ownership.
A Thanet council spokesperson said: “We are aware of the ongoing issues with waste volumes in Athelstan Road and neighbouring streets in Cliftonville. We will arrange to replace the existing paladin bins with lidded ones as soon as possible.
“Our street cleaning team empties the bins at the sea front end of Athelstan Road at least twice a day and in addition, our enforcement team monitors the area for waste-related anti-social behaviour such as fly-tipping.”
UPDATE: Photo taken by ward councillor Alan Currie on August 14 after street cleaning team had visited.
Its a problem of densely occupied areas. But in Bilbao, (Spain), in similar streets , they have a very large green container at the ends of streets, emptied every night. It works.
Thanet councils answer was take away their bins last time. Kent County Council had a great idea to make you book going to the tip to add an extra barrier to recycling. These people 🙄
Any attempts at recycling in the area are a complete waste of time, the extent of contamination from unsorted waste being put in any available bin renders the idea pointless. There needs to be an ability to deal with the waste as is before going for desirable extras.
The bin lids never last long as the bins are usually overfilled and lids pulled down damaging them. The problem is largely a community use issue. Dalby square is mentioned in the article, but the one way side of the square has two bulk bin areas that are constantly a mess, the other 2 way side has one bin area and is generally much tidier, the issue this side is brocken glass around the bottle bank and rubbish from the bin in the play area.
It must be said that TDC put considerable efforts into emptying the bins.
Perhaps its time to do away with the traditional door step collections and resort solely to bulk bin services with resources redirected to even more frequent emptying of these.
Well said! The irony is the photos used in the article show bins with lids!
My neighbour is a roadsweeper in Cliftonville and said TDC are not perfect but those big bins are emptied twice a day!
It’s not uncommon for the bins in Dalby Square to be emptied 2+ times a day, in addition you have the bulk waste ( cage) wagon that patrols regularly. But that only really encourages people to just dump unwanted items on the street. But what do you do.
You cannot tell me that this problem is not exacerbated to a huge extent by the actions and attitudes of so many of the local residents who seem , to me at least, think that out of sight is out of mind.
Adding one’s household rubbish to an already full facility should never happen, but it obviously does. About time the residents themselves – the ones who dump this rubbish on the street – were held accountable. It seems that TDC are actually removing this garbage on a very regular basis.
The salient matter of allowing so many HMOs in a confined area also needs looking at but that will take time to address.
Where does this rubbish come from?…… answers on a postage stamp, please!
“attitudes of so many of the local residents”
sadly says it all. I lived in Harold Road in the 70/80s and we never had these problems.
Yesterday – 12.08.22 – over a year since being initially reported & coincidentally barely 24 hours before the publication of this IOTN article, one of the 3 coast end Athelstan Road paladin bins was fitted with a new lid to keep the seagulls/vermin/cockroaches out – however, a mid street paladin bin, also reported a significant time ago is still missing a bin lid, as are 2 out of the 4 on Ethelbert Road & ARTRA believe there are still major concerns about the paladin bins on Dalby Square too.
A year is an insanely long time for the community to wait for something so incredibly basic as a bin lid to be replaced, particularly given the rise in community sightings of rats, mice & cockroaches not only at these bins, but increasingly being reported inside peoples homes the full length of Athelstan Road.
The community on Athelstan Road, Ethelbert Road & Dalby Square are legally entitled to live in a clean & civilised environment & it is almost impossible to believe that the very long term waste management crisis on these three streets is legally compliant with statutory requirements on keeping our environment in a fit state.
ARTRA have been requesting a senior level meeting for community representatives from Athelstan Road, Ethelbert Road & Dalby Square for quite some time & for Cliftonville West community groups to be consulted/listened too on potential waste management strategic changes, without which TDC’s waste management on these 3 streets cannot be described as anything other than *crisis control*.
ARTRA continue to ask for Ward Councillors to help arrange a senior level meeting between local Cliftonville West community groups & TDC officers/managers/supervisors/executives, but so far this perfectly reasonable ARTRA request has yet to be addressed & supported by councillors.
ARTRA repeat that local community groups be consulted & included in a senior level TDC meeting to devise a fit-for-purpose waste management strategy for the area, which goes significantly beyond merely adding an ever increasing number of paladin bins & bin collections, given these bins are constantly being witnessed being used by those living in neighbouring streets, where landlords have failed to provide their tenants with their own on-site waste storage space, plus car loads of waste is put in Athelstan Road bins on a daily basis.
No amount of community intelligence offered to TDC – including time of day + vehicle registration plates for CCTV video evidence checks – appears to result fines actually being enforced, as the use of these bins by the wider community continues unabated – these 3 streets have literally become the *dumping ground* for a very much larger area of Cliftonville, including out of ward areas, than can ever be reasonably accommodated by adding an extra bin, or two – particularly given that the volume of waste always magically increases to beyond the capacity of the communal bins provided.
ARTRA was formed to give the long term ignored community a better opportunity to be heard & although the formation of this constituted community group has had councillor support, on the issue of a substantial strategic change in waste management policy & practice, which addresses the root causes of the overwhelming volume of waste deposited on these 3 streets from elsewhere in Margate, compounded by rogue landlord & rogue management agency activity, as outlined, no coherent solution will adequately meet the scale of the problem & stop Athelstan Road being reduced to an urban landfill site.
Being effectively sidelined on this issue is untenable for the local authority, as ARTRA begin exploring legal options, such as an external audit of waste management statutory failure & other potential options – ARTRA would far prefer meaningful dialogue at senior level & await councillor acknowledgment & support for an approach involving executives & more senior TDC officers to address the substantive change so desperately needed.
Why push for bin lids when the RESIDENTS of these roads cannot be bothered to lift them to put their waste in the bin. It is the RESIDENTS dumping the waste on the pavement, even when the bins are empty. Nothing to do with TDC on this occasion, just filthy unhygienic people living in the area. Wind your neck in.
I was told by a council worker that if there wasn’t at least one open bin without a lid a lot of residents will chuck their bags on the pavement as they refuse to touch the bin…TRUE!!
Well i’ve read your post 3 times and unless i’ve still missed it , there is not a single mention of any of the problems being the result of the areas residents, which must mean they are all perfect little angels and the rest of thanet is doing it’s concerted best to dump its rubbish in cliftonville. Which is patently absurd, whats the point of endless complaint and demands if you can’t accept some of your fellow residents are far from responsible when it comes to disposing of refuse?
Good comment! We all know TDC are not perfect but surely residents especially in Cliffonville must bear some responsibility! Someone mentioned cameras! Great and the footage can then be shared!
Won’t happen, i offered access to my building for tdc to install cctv equipment they insinuated they had, to gain evidence against persistent offenders, at which point the councils tune changed to “it’s an option we could pursue”. Plus the evidence needed to actually prosecute is considerable , any fines imposed then need to be collected and in an area where incomes are low this is not a simple task and would likely not be pursued.
Rubbish in cliftonville is not a new issue , been a fact of life the 24 years i’ve had an interest in the area. One common thread is that it’s associated with a hardcore ( if ever changing) minority of local residents.
Short of dedicated collection vehicles patrolling the area 24/7 you aren’t going to beat the issue until you’ve balanced the community. ie enough right minded responsible people live there to exert sufficient peer pressure on the less desirable to change thieir ways.
In the Algarve there are similarities to Thanet. Very high visitor arrivals/departures. Beaches stretching for miles, Ice cream stall and fast food stalls everywhere. What you do not see is rubbish. Emerging from Faro Airport it hits you immediately just how clean everything is. Every community has 4 large waste bins buried in the ground labelled as to the contents. Yet Portugal is a poor country. Thanet is a tourist town and has to set itself upp as dealing with visitors and residents mixed together. I don’t see much professionalism in the way that Thanet is managed for residents or caravanners. Motorhome users, cars with families. toilet facilities, drunken yobs et Al. An active plan to create an excellent holiday resort has never been possible with the negatives of TDC over the decades.
It will take real dreamer and achiever to create the culture taken for granted in Portugal and other Med resorts.
I completely agree with Mike
Thanet is a disgrace and I blame the councils.Every coastal town i visit is far cleaner with cleanly swept roads,no weeds and hardly any graffiti. Ramsgate as you come down the hill looking at the harbour looks like a Third World Country.
Drive from central London and as soon as you hit the Wantsum river (the beginning of the Isle) litter inceases 20 fold.Take a look at all the silted updrains as well.No water reaching reservoirs from this area.
David
100% correct
Everything starts to go down hill the nearer you get to thanet !
Driving standards drop, weeds get more and bigger, litter increases, graffiti ( or art ) increases, the smell of dope increases, the amount of street drinkers increase, lots of anti social behaviour increases.
On the plus side people in flash high end cars, people with personal numbers and expensive houses seem to like this.
After living in Newham for over 20 years I can assure you that blaming everything on immigrants is incorrect. Immigrants make up over 80% of Newham’s population. But most of them have assimilated in many ways. More importantly, they live in as many different kinds of housing as more long-standing Newham residents do, and dispose of their rubbish similarly.
It’s time something was done about disposal of nappies and sanitary products. We are reverting to the days before sewerage systems. Just throwing these items into any sort of general rubbish collections is a disaster! There should be some sort of sealed bins to deposit all this waste in. Pity the poor rubbish collectors having to deal with this!
Sanitary napkins and baby diapers are sealed in little plastic nappy bags before being placed in bins. If these items are visible on the streets it’s usually because gulls and foxes have gone through the bins at night.
You obviously live in a different cliftonville to the one here, a wander around the area will often reveal napppies and sanitary products that once used are disposed of in a cursory fashion.
Mmmmmmm. I don’t live in cliftonville. I just haven’t ever met a grown woman who disposes of those items that way. I really haven’t.
Then you are commenting from a position of ignorance in terms of local knowledge. The area has a disproportionate number of residents whose lifestyles are way from the norm.
Letting your dog defecate on the floor of your flat but not clearing it up.
Baby left to sleep in a cardboard box next to a radiator unchanged.
Toilet left uncleaned for so long there’s an inch of accumulated filth and limescale in it.
Caged bird left to die when tenant did a moon light flit
Ovens with rivers of fat running down the front .
Drug syringes stuck inskirting boards for later use.
Throwing furniture from the third floor because its easier than getting it down the stairs.
Some of the more memorable highlights. Trust me council housing officers and family welfare officers have strong stomachs and infinite patience. ( i’m not one)
Quite often a full nappy is thrown from a window!
Sorry but I have nappies thrown in my garden by tourists.After a day at the beach,Mum changes baby’s nappy before the drive home and rather take it home throws it onto the pavement or over the wall into my garden.
This happened to me 4 times.I actually witnessed it on 1 occassion.Its apalling.
The article is full of old photos, some look like they were taken over the festive period, the bin areas around the Lido have been better recently so maybe the changes put in place from July are working. An evening collection mentioned in the article would really help.
The photos were meta dated and were taken over the past couple of months but, yes, some before the July changes to the waste service, and a couple taken last week
I see a lot of gammon in the village Robster! The big question is are you having egg or pineapple with your’s today.
TDC should try solving the problem instead of whinging about it!
1. Install CCTV to cover the bin areas 24 hours 7 days a week.
2. Publish pictures of all offenders faces and vehicles.
3. Monitor it daily.
4. Offer a £20 incentive Council Tax discount to all who report names and a penalty notice is issued.
Nice easy way to make money out of rubbish and keep the D.F,L.s happy by clearing up a problem.
TDC did post photos of residents dumping furniture by the bins a while ago but blurred out their faces so as not to upset them! You couldn’t it up!
That’d be a bit embarrassing for the foodbank/ cafe opposite the Edgar Road bins, they cheerfully chuck in old food in whatever containers it might be in, i’ve not seen them do it wrapped up and secure.
What offences are you hoping to penalise? The bins maybe intended for local residents but having been funded by TDC council tax they’re effectively a public service for any resident ( not business ) that wishes to use them.
The council is very selective on who it chooses to issue notices to, largely as it has “negative performance indicators” one of which is issuing penalty charges that can’t be collected.
The only ways you’ll ever improve the state of cliftonvilles streets is to have an almost continuous collection service that patrols the streets on a say 6 hourly rotation. A change in the residents that live there to reduce the disproportionate number of the irresponsible and replace them with tidy minded ones. The former is unaffordable , the latter will take another 10 years at best assuming the area continues to attract the right people.
I think its about time the TDC wento special measures.Is there an Ombudsman to report their abysmal record too.
Yes Davo. There’s a procedure for filing complaints about issues such as this. And yes, if the complaint isn’t resolved to your satisfaction, you can contact the ombudsman
You let who into your country ? Foxes and seagulls ? Who do you reckon rips bin bags open at 12 midnight ? Swimmers from Dover ?
I see fox lover Kathy bailes has blamed seagulls for going through waste bags at night. Yes Kathy. It’s the gulls. It’s all done by the gulls. God forbid you’ll admit that it’s the foxes and gulls partnered together in this
I am a street cleaner and I can only go by what I see with my own eyes and the bags are mostly ripped open by seagulls!
Hi
I’m an early morning and late night walker. I see foxes all the time when I’m out walking late
I see them too but not ripping open bin bags
Lot of assumptions there. Pretty sure I’ve quoted people, myself not being one of them.
” ‘unending’ tide of waste ‘with no end in sight’”
Someone gets paid by the word
It’s a quote
i notice that polio is spreading in england. a disease we thought was eradicated , it is spread by human sewage , and is found in two countries in the world – i will leave the rest up too you
And ,of course, it’s spreading because some people don’t want to get vaccinated. I don’t know why they don’t…
According to Lurchy Steve (an ex bin-operative.not loc legacy) he says Tdc is skint or nearly or in debt, good luck getting anychange.
We have bin short changed, he says. I commented its such a rubbish comment and asked steve to get a round in and check your change}~
The councillors are on the case, so all sorted soon.
Ha HAA HA ha
Don’t tell them Pike… they’ll be moving in next (or tomorrow).
TDC needs a Headstrong/Heartstrong Person up front!
Previous Senior Officers were always difficult to converse with, and hid away in unreachable Offices, rarely visible in daytime hours. A bit like the Mafiosa, but more bloody minded. It’s not a job anyone can do.
However, organising bins in “disaster Areas” should be easy. CCTV to catch the ‘fly-tippers’ for starters.
When I was nipper, many years ago, I lived in a flat in Cliftonville.
Everybody had a bin. Some people had more than one and they were emptied once a week but everybody was responsible for their own bin(s).
Those who had a back yard would usually keep their bin there and those who didn’t had to find somewhere either in the front yard or, if you lived in a flat as we did, it was kept on the landing.
Keeping it on the street was simply not an option.
People managed their waste better then too. Anything that was likely to smell such as fish etc. Would be tightly wrapped in newspaper before putting it in the bin. The same with anything which could be dangerous like broken glass etc.
Every collection day, we would put our bin out in the BACK ALLEY.
The refuse truck would be parked at the end of the alley and the binmen, usually 3 or 4 of them would walk up the alley with their large bins and empty our bins into them. Usually 2 or 3 binloads would go into the dustman’s bin which would then be emptied into the truck.
After your bin had been emptied, it was your responsibility to remove it from the alley at your earliest convenience.
Of course we had seagulls in those days too, but they had less joy than they do now because everyone was responsible for their own bin so they all had lids. Not only that, if they did get into someone’s bin and make a mess, it was out of sight of the general public.
Cliftonville was a beautiful place to live in those days. There were flower beds on the lawns along Eastern Esplanade which were well maintained by the council and there was no rubbish to be seen as there is now.
Now here is a thing. All of those service alleys are still there. Every street has one from Zion Place to Warwick/Surrey Road so why the hell is there all this rubbish on permanent display in Cliftonville? Maybe we should turn the clock back 50 years or so.
This is spot on!
There are those who do everything they can to put their rubbish in the bins correctly, but it’s those who just can’t be bothered putting bags outside of the bins, and those who cannot be bothered to break down the cardboard boxes before binning it are just as bad as not putting the bag in the bin you only need 2 boxes to take the space of up to 4 bags, and to daughter of Enoch you definitely need to get out and see the world sanitary towels and tampons getting put into bags before placing into the black bin bag no chance 70% are either put down the pan or straight in the black bin bag some are even thrown out of windows at passing walkers you would crige possibly be sick at some of the things they do with tampons , as for nappies people cannot afford nappy bags now they get folded in and put in back bag, this will attract the gulls very quickly,
The furniture that gets thrown out of windows has the advantage that bed bugs aren’t dragged though the building. Theres plenty of them in Cliftonville.
“attitudes of so many of the local residents” – sadly says it all. I lived in Harold Road in the 70/80’s and we didn’t have these problems then…
Harold Road was a lovely street then along with so many others
i lived in Harold for 5 years…!!! When you do a search of a postcode for an on line form you get a drop down box as long as your arm…In Garlinge here i get 10 houses.
So too many people and too many who treat there locality with contempt.
Too many people is TDC fault for allowing so many HMO and the people who are there are of course 99% from countries that are ruined so that’s their MO.
The article is about overflowing bins etc!
My point was the area was once very clean compared to today’s standards!
And it’s not just the councils fault.
Residents are to blame as well.
Samantha’s comment is spot on. Nearly all the roads in Cliftonville West were clean & tidy.
Ruzenka, what they have said!
Athelstan Road was one of the premier B&B’s in Cliftonville.
The owners took pride in their businesses.
The same for most of the roads in Cliftonville West.
When cheap package holidays took off it was the demise of the holiday trade in Cliftonville.
The large properties were bought up and sadly became houses of multi occupancy.
This is why there is such a problem today.
A friend of mine came to visit recently and wanted a ride around Cliftonville where he used to live.
He was absolutely shocked by the state of some of the roads.
You cannot keep blaming TDC for all the problens, residents have to take some of the blame also.
Perhaps if they were to be emptied? This doesn’t happen in Canterbury where they are emptied twice a day, council services are dreadful in Thanet, I’ve never seen worse
As Cabinet member for rubbish 10 years ago I banged the table (literally) to get the then director for the service to initiate an evening collection in Margate/Cliftonville, Ramsgate and Broadstairs. This could only be up to 7:30pm as this was when the tip had to close. The collections cost £50k a year, and were dropped when funding reduced and I was no longer the responsible councillor. I have no doubt that funding could be found if officers put their minds to if, and there was sufficient political weight put behind it. I’ll leave you to judge whether the current incumbent is that interested, or has the skills needed to make something happen. And if you think the Council’s preferred option of education and enforcement is the way to go, then you are living in cloud cuckoo land. These measures are just kicking the can down the road. And, by the way, just think what use the money used to defend, and then pay-off the TDC CEO could have been used for. There was money for her, but not enough to keep the streets clean in West Cliftonville it seems.
They are emptied twice a day and often more!
This ain’t Canterbury!
People have a right to live in clean streets. The council are obligated to keep the streets clean and free of filth. The filth and on going problem is nothing new but I do believe TDC are responsible. It is the council’s responsibility to deal with this; and to come up with a joined up strategy to deal with this however daunting that may be. The truth is to date they have neither the inclination, nor the solutions to deal with this. But they are in breach of their responsibilities that much is for sure. I have written to the interim CEO Colin Carmichael after posting images of the state of our streets in Margate and Cliftonville some weeks prior after being shocked at the appalling sanitary conditions in these areas I visited. If I don’t get a satisfactory response I will have to take this externally. Waste carries disease…… TDC are negating their responsibilities. This is a public health risk……and they can be prosecuted for it.
With rights come responsibilities.
So residents should be expected to be responsible with the way they deal with their rubbish.
TDC have the right to the same expectations , you can’t just keep throwing money at a problem without dealing with the root cause.
So that wil means that yet again the taxpayers of Thanet would be paying for the fines imposed on the incompetents we pay to professionally serve us . Something wrong here somewhere!
So the route cause is overcrowded and poor standard housing. We certainly have a shortage of housing which will continue to get worse until we have a programme which can deliver3m new affordable houses and a backlog of the same number of uninsulated poor quality dwellings. Now which political party will pick up that hot potato!
You seem to have overlooked that all the roads mentioned in the article were covered by selective licensing for 10 years, it only finished last year and many licences have still not expired, property conditions and occupation levels were key parts of the scheme, so probably safe to assume that the vast majority of the property is to standard from the schemes point of view, how tenants live is another matter as is the number of people they choose to move into their home.
People really have no idea how some people choose to live.
Where there are issues with lack of refuse storage these are often a problem of TDC’s own making, whilst set out as a condition for planning, it’s not a function of building control to check planning conditions are complied with and planning won’t check unless there is a complaint at which point the properties are usually sold off, so effectively to late to act. In another memorable the council approved refuse storage that around 6 months later the fire service declared a fire hazard , so all the rubbish got kept on the pavement for over 3 years.
You also have changes to TDc collection policy ,where residents are required to put their rubbish on the kerbside, where buildings have communal refuse storage in cliftonville people rarely bother doing so and you can nogh on guarantee one resident in a block will “forget” so you end up with piles of festering rubbish. Council complains to landlord, landlord clears it up, writes to tenants, tenants ignore and so it continues until landlord shuts the bin store to prevent infestations of vermin and insects. It was this situation that eld to the calls for the paladin bins , which were eventually provided.
A friend told me recently that she had heard this from another friend.
The friend had moved into a Cul de sac in Cliftonville, newly built about 3 years ago. There are only 6 houses in this Cul de Sac that were supposed to be privately bought.
She bought hers.
TDC bought the 2 largest properties and one houses a family with six children and the other a Romanian family with 4 children.
Surely, there must have been other families with 4 children who were born locally and had probably been on the waiting list for sometime, do they not get first choice?
Who at TDC makes these decisions?
This family should have been on the waiting list after families waiting for years.
Why did they get preferential treatment?
You really could not make it up!.
This town and this country have lost the plot!
That is why so many want to live here.
Lived opposite until two years ago…filthy takers
Since the 70’s social housing has been allocated on a “needs based” basis , so if one family lives in a 2 bed but needs a 4, but a family arrives with no housing at all and needs a 4 bed the latter will have greater needs based priority. A simplistic example but you get the gist.
Are you saying LC, that the people from oversees who move to this area and I am not talking about people from war zones, but Eastern Europeans, who choose to come to this country for whatever reason, that they would get priority?
No i’m saying that anyone that presents themselves to the local authority with a housing need and meets the criteria required gets assessed on the same needs based terms and is banded on that outcome.
You can cheat that system by renting a one bedroom flat , signing a tenancy agreement saying it has an occupancy limit of 2 people , then move in a family of 6, or have children as fast as you can once in it. In both cases you have whats called “tenant instigated overcrowding” landlord can’t be blamed. The family then puts itself on the housing list, school will no doubt raise a concern sheet when they learn of the families situation, social services get involved , slowly but surely the family moves up the priority list for housing , a few noise complaints from neighbours , antisocial behaviour issues etc etc, a common complaint of “look at how we’re living”, eventually the magic social housing offer appears, they get the house and garden ( they’ve made sure the family is big enough to make flats unsuitable) job done. Others who’ve not played the game feel they’ve been leap frogged in the queue. Matters not a jot where you’ve come from the rules apply to all. However lack of english , cultural issues may be seen as placing a foreign applicant in greater need and so of greater priority, throw in some health issues for good measure and you soon move up the list.
It’s what led to the stigma attached to social housing estates, the policy came in in the 70’s and so the chances of a working family getting a council house has gone, we instead create unbalance communities . The concept of affordable housing %’s on private decelopmemts was partly meant to help break this cycle , but people are not happy at paying market value for their home to have it blighted by a social housing tenant two doors away , with the problems they often bring with them, hence the negotiations that occur between developers and councils, blocks of flats effectively separated and different entrances, developers offering to build a separate development for their social contribution away from their private developments. Etc etc
root