My photograph of ripped-open black bags – left outside the communal door of upper floor flats in the centre of Bath – brought a response from Jacky Wilkinson.
In an email she writes: I walk along the London Road a lot and this kind of sight is all too frequent! As the buildings have been more intensively subdivided, the traditional front basement area has been lost as storage space for bins, so it’s now common to see the railings permanently draped with sacks and bags and the front entrances lined with boxes. These are visual eyesore that is really dragging down the quality of the public realm.
The Council is proposing more conversions of upper floors – in itself no bad thing – but the issue of waste bins must be resolved or else our streets will become an obstacle course. As for plastic sacks – I can spot thé party houses easily as I walk along.
The weekend party-goers seem to be required to dump their plastic sacks outside and recycle boxes full of vodka bottles no matter whether there’s a collection that day or not!
This is an issue that should be tackled too.
I’m ashamed of Bath, with its rubbish piled up outside its lovely Georgian buildings, sticky dirty pavements, cracked stones etc. This city relies on its reputation as a major tourist attraction and yet keeping the streets clean and tidy is not seen as a priority. I don’t get it.”
I agree. I too am disgusted by the poor standards of cleanliness seen everywhere. Having been to Europe over recent years, that disgusting part of the world that many Brits in 2016 thought we were so much better than, you don’t see this sort of mess. Yet we have laws against it but, as in so many areas of misbehaviour, where is the enforcement ?
I find older people condemned for the state of the environment. However we have to point the finger at younger people and students in Bath for so much of the rubbish spreading around our streets. I recently visited a house in Johnstone Street where the pavement was covered in black bags torn apart by seagulls. A student house, masses of rubbish on the pavement, not on rubbish collection day. Obviously not correctly sorted as food identified by the seagulls in the thin black bags, not in the food caddies. Surely we have to discuss stopping house collection.? We need to talk about communal collection bins such as seen on the continent. My argument is that we carried the “rubbish” into our houses, so we could also carry it out. Even my late 97 year old father could carry a small bag of rubbish outside every day. I find problems with rubbish reported to the council are not acted upon. The same houses, and same streets are always quite disgusting. As you say, Bath is a mess.
Air B n B ( cashing in!!??) As a 100% Bathonian( with at least 150 years of family history in the city) I took my partner into the centre around a year ago, after living in Cornwall many years, and met with my sister ,and BOTH our first comments were what a mess!!! …to much alfresco dining ! Attracting seagulls etc , the CC aren’t doing their jobs ! More concerned about student flat’s! And penalising the ” working man” ( sorry PERSON!!) They’ve ruined my home city! My late father and mother would turn in their Graves!