Why does Kilburn High Road looks so dirty?

A case study for November 2019

There are many complaints about the lack of cleanliness of Kilburn High Road. Many factors contribute to this perception ie litter, fly tips, rubbish bags strewn across narrow busy pavements, unkempt shop fronts, stained pavements, stickers on frontages and street furniture, dirty public bins etc…

In November 2019, it looked even dirtier than ever, with piles of uncollected rubbish bags everywhere especially on the Camden side of the Kilburn High Road…

We thus made a freedom of information request to Camden Council requesting more information about what happened in November 2019. We have now received an answer and here are the facts.

1. Number of reported fly tips in November 2019 : 132

2. Number of substantiated domestic refuse collections in November 2019 : 37 (should have been 60) thus a 38% failure rate or 12 morning collections (should have been 30, failure rate of 60%) and 25 evening collections (should have been 30, failure rate of 17%)

What is shocking is the interval between domestic refuse collections.

We have had written confirmation by Camden Council that domestic refuse should be collected on Kilburn High Road a minimum of twice a day, ie in the morning after 7am and in the evening after 9pm. This already is a significant lower level of collections than most of our neighbouring town centres in Camden. Hampstead High Street has 3 timed collections a day, West End Lane has 4 collections a day (2 of which are timed).

On Kilburn High Road domestic refuse collections are not timed, this means that unlike in all other Town Centres residents and businesses can leave their rubbish on pavements at any time. This combined with the fact that Veolia are obviously not carrying out the scheduled collections leads to accumulation of refuse bags on a permanent basis on the busy and narrow pavements. Thus the feeling of untidiness!

In November 2019 the worst accumulation of rubbish was between 24th November at 7.38 am and 26th November 2pm. There was no domestic refuse collections in this period… That is 54 hours or more than 2 days worth of domestic refuse accumulated on our pavements.

What is even more worrying is that even when Veolia supply information to show that there has been domestic refuse collections, we know for a fact that the collection did not take place. On 25th November we tweeted at 15.34 about a large pile of bags in front of 328 Kilburn High Road. The same pile of bags was at the same location (only bigger) on 26th November at midnight. Veolia still say there was a domestic refuse collections on 26th November at 2pm and one at 10.36pm. The pictures prove that the claimed collections didn’t happen!

Tweet of 25th November 15.34pm https://twitter.com/LifeInKilburn/status/1198988363824545792

Tweet of 27th November 12.20am https://twitter.com/LifeInKilburn/status/1199483067292880897

Films of rubbish on pavements on 26th November at 4pm and midnight. https://twitter.com/LifeInKilburn/status/1199484872609415171

From our evidence there was no domestic refuse collection between 24th November at 7.38am and 27th November at 9.45am, that is no collection for 74 hours ie more than 3 days.

So what can be done? Ask for a minimum of 3 domestic and business TIMED refuse collections for Kilburn High Road, that includes the first 20 meters of any adjoining road. Please write to the Kilburn Councillors to that effect. Here are their email addresses douglas.beattie@camden.gov.uk, maryam.eslamdoust@camden.gov.uk, thomas.gardiner@camden.gov.uk. Please feel free to link to this page!

Sources:

Veolia collections in November 2019 as supplied by Camden Council

Date and time of Domestic Refuse collections at 338 Kilburn High Road (above data used, unsubstantiated data removed)


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