• SORRY to keep talking rubbish, but the treatment of your correspondent Mike Farrant last week when he asked for “assistance” in moving his bins four metres, is probably typical, (The council and Veolia should work with the people, January 17).

Even though he has a heart condition, some officer from the council decided he did not merit help and suggested he might need a letter from his GP to certify the state of his health! Why? That jobsworth could undoubtedly see that Mr Farrant was an older person, what right has he got to refuse help?

This shows, as clearly as can be, that this new Veolia contract must be abandoned and a new contract be negotiated which starts by looking at the issue from our end: we in the community pay for a service, what Camden has “negotiated” is not a service, it’s an imposition.

I hate to put ideas into Veolia’s heads, but it would save them even more money if we just had one large set of bins at the end of every street – heck, why not make us all take our rubbish to the tip!?

The problem which the Veolia contract fails to recognise is that almost all homes in Camden are multi-occupied, so there is no single family responsible for dealing with all the rubbish bins so what happens then?

In almost all parts of Camden, bins are abandoned in the streets for hours after they have been emptied, sometimes even days, and this makes everywhere look a mess and also encourages fly-tipping. This must change.

In my house, with nine flats, it falls on one or two residents, usually the older ones like me who are home in the day and, as I near 80. I am not prepared to do this much longer: there can be as many as 10 large wheelie bins to move, and when full they are too much for me.

I can return the empty bins, left wherever Veolia feels like it, but why should I? I want a service and that is what we all pay council tax for and Camden has failed to provide.

All properties in Camden have had their rubbish collected from an area near the property for decades – in our case, over a century – and there is no reason why this should not continue.

The exceptions, probably a few hundred homes across the borough, might need to be asked to move their bins to a more convenient location, and that is fair and should be done where it is possible. But making all residents move their bins a few feet closer is stupid.

The management of Camden Council is appalling, time and again, our council officers are found wanting, but we pay their salaries and it’s time they were made to work for us! And if our Labour councillors can’t make this happen, why should we vote for them ever again?

Oversight is what we need: our elected councillors should be monitoring the actions of all council staff, making sure they focus on the right issues and get the best deals for services we need; not the cheapest!

In the case of rubbish collection, we need our bins to be collected, emptied and returned to a properly located storage area, an entirely reasonable request. But Veolia don’t even do what the new contract says, so we need a new one.

DAVID REED
Eton Avenue, NW3