Back to the 1970s and the smell of rubbish piling up

Published: 25 June, 2010

• I WOULD like to highlight the incompetencies of Enterprise, which collects the general rubbish from Popham 1 estate.

Since January, there had been five missed collections, but last week the sixth missed collection took the biscuit.

On Popham 1, we were having cavity wall filling carried out by Enterprise, but the part of the company that collects rubbish refused to pick up because of the amount of dust and debris on the walkway (this is what I was told when I phoned).

An urgent collection was arranged by Homes for Islington (HfI) for Saturday.

But there was no collection then or on Sunday.

On Monday, following hours of phone calls, HfI got a response from Enterprise saying that it could not collect on Saturday because of contractors’ vehicles – there was none – and on Sunday it forgot.

However, it then forgot Monday’s collection and said it would be Tuesday or Wednesday.

In the hottest days of the year, with at least 150 sacks of rubbish on each of the estate’s 10 walkways, the smell was reminiscent of the collection strikes in the 1970s and 1980s.

The health and safety implications are obvious.

Finally, through the intervention of Councillor Gary Doolan, the rubbish was collected at 7.30pm on Monday.

Why is it that a councillor can get the work done, but HfI, which is supposedly there to help, could not.

Islington Council should get rid of Enterprise and HfI.

Bring it all under the council, and stop this excuse-making passing the buck.

PATRICIA NOLAN
Vice-chair, Popham 1 Tenants’ and Residents’ Association