Something that has cropped up in the last month is the issue of social responibility, with a post both on The Times Surf Nation and here Bloggsd regarding the impact of litter on the beach and holiday villages such as Mumbles.
For about 8 weeks many of the fishing cottages here in Mumbles village are rented out, which of course brings income into the local community, everyone benefits from the secondary spend of the visitors.
However, the social problem faced by residents could be partly due to rigid public sector systems that do not recognise the seasonal change and therefore do not accommodate for the busy tourism season.
Rubbish collection, is always on Thursday year round, however, many of the visitor turn arounds in the holiday rental cottages are Friday or Saturday.
Which results in all the black bags being put out on the street a day or two after bin collection day. Below is a result of this, other peoples crap all over the street attracting rats, foxes etc Not really what visitors to our beautiful village want to see you could argue. Yet, the residents have to put up with this crap week in week out in the summer, who is at fault?
The homes from home agencies well they are making money, but they are also helping the community make money, perhaps a weekly reminder to new people that the bags go out on Thursday.
The Landlords they are also making good money, should there be a collection fee placed on them? Probably not because then they would not rent their cottages and visitors would not be able to stay with us which would result in a 'ghost town' all year round. Perhaps, if their paying visitors have forgotten to sort their crap out on the right day then the land lords should take it away and dispose of it correctly.
The Council The good old Council system here in the UK which unfortunately is so slow and bulky it really struggles to cater for any service which is as dynamic and organic as tourism in fact many Councils still do not understand the value of this particular part of the service sector to them. They should consult agency/land lords and change collection days summer/winter to suit the visitors, therefore moving from a Thursday to a Saturday. Is that difficult? Probably is for a Local Authority.
The Polluter the visitor perhaps should 'only leave their footsteps on the beach' so to speak, ignorance is not a defence, it is obvious that if you put black bags out on the street without the collectors coming the end result will be crap all over the place. Perhaps they should make an effort to find out when the bins are being collected, or let the land lords/agency know that there are bags that need to be collected, do not put them out leave them for collection inside.
Here is a picture of bags out on the wrong day which I think shows little respect for the local residents, what do you think? In fact whilst typing this up (Saturday a.m) the guys accross the road in the house seen in this picture are moving out and adding more bags to the exsisting mess from last week, oh joy more crap for us to put up with.
What do you think? Or is this just summer life putting up with other peoples crap?
Just had this email through, 'food for thought!'
Hi Simon
This is a perennial problem. The last person to try and get it changed was
Jan McKechnie who had a self catering cottage in Dickslade. Her main concern was
the build up of black bags alongside the wheelie bins outside The George - the
problems there were perhaps more than in Mumbles generally
This highlighted a number of
problems
- Black bags and wheelie bins are collected by two different 'companies'.
The commercial wheelie bin contract has been let to part of the rubbish
collection department - they are not paid to pick up black bags (or any bags
that are not in the bins). They collect on different days to domestic
collection
- Because the bins for The George are not in an enclosed area visitors think
that it is a rubbish collection point so it attracts black bags which then
nobody takes any responsibility for.
During this time I was introduced to the Cabinet Member for Rubbish who
said that Bonymaen has its rubbish collected on a Friday and he wasn't
going to change it for those "...." in Mumbles!
He did have a point by saying that self catering was a commercial
operation and they should pay for their rubbish to be collected. Good
point but how are you going to police it? should all rented
properties pay for commercial collection? End result -
it's would be impossible and would drive more operators underground.
This is all part of the problem that CCS does not regard Swansea as being a
tourist destination even though tourism contributes up to 15% of the GNP of the
region - much more in rural areas. Swansea has the ambition of a
gnat and needs to look at its assets and develop them accordingly. If
it is prepared to cater for the visitor then the residents will benefit as
well.
Good luck - keep campaigning and don't forget the dog dirt!!!!
For places to stay in Swansea Bay click here: Visit Swansea Bay for Places to Stay Newquay Click here: Summertime, Newquay, Cornwall
