An on-line petition has been launched by three councillors from the Southfield area affected by the recent refuse collection problems, in a bid to force Ealing Council to review its new service.

Cllrs Gary Malcolm, Andrew Steed and Harvey Rose described the situation over the past ten days as an “ absolute scandal”. At least a quarter of roads in Southfield have not had their refuse collected this week, despite a pledge from the Council to put extra collections in place. Some streets have now gone two weeks without a collection.

In a statement issued after a meeting with Ealing Council’s Chief Executive the councillors urged people to sign the online petition so that a public meeting could be held to discuss the matter. In a statement they said:

“We have set up an on-line petition to get the Council to hold a review so that this type of poor service cannot happen again. Please sign it yourself and then please pass it on to friends and neighbours. If we get more than 1500 then we can get the issue discussed in a public meeting. The more signatures the more powerful our statement will be.

The link to click is http://signme.org.uk/727

The meeting with Ealing Council's Chief Executive highlighted the following:

Confirmation that 25 percent of roads in Southfield have not had their waste collected this week; acceptance that their needs to be a change of policy so that streets in Southfield that were missed should have been treated with a higher priority; that part of the problem was the contractor had too few staff, who were not fully trained with the new collection vehicles and the collection rounds were larger than before.

The meeting also heard that the backlog of uncollected waste is reducing borough-wide, and the Council hope to have no backlog by the end of the week.

They also discussed communication problems with residents who have made complaints about the poor service and confirmed that better communication is needed from the Council.

Councillor Gary Malcolm said: "Ealing's Chief Executive was open and honest about the issues he is facing and I could see he is active in trying to ensure that the problems are not repeated next week."

April 12, 2012