Committee to form on rubbish

By Jim Mynard
SOLICITOR Marylyn Gilberthorpe will chair a Berwick Village Chamber of Commerce committee of four to deal with rubbish problems in Berwick.
Business people have become impatient with the commercial garbage collection situation, telling members at the December chamber meeting they were fed up with the “stink from the bins”.
Manager Des Wynne said the chamber had written to Casey chief executive requesting that a senior council officer be allocated to work with the committee on waste collection.
Mr Wynne said the subcommittee members to work with Ms Gilberthorpe were solicitors Peter Liakopoulos, Stefan Del Monaco, and Angela McPhee.
He said the committee would examine the policy implications for control and regulation of the waste collection and goods pick up and delivery services in the north and south retail precincts.
Mr Wynne said it would look at visual amenity, bin size and appearance, bin location and bin access provisions, plus health and safety including control of smells and collection frequencies.
“The committee will also look at traffic congestion including collection times and truck movements within potentially pedestrianfriendly environments,” he said.
“The outcome will be production of a draft policy on waste collection, regulation and monitoring in the High Street precinct which addresses the health and safety issues and improves the amenity of the area conducive to successful and vibrant retailing activity in the village.”
A waste management paper presented to the chamber expressed major concern about the two laneways Paternoster and Adams, which strategically are earmarked to be pedestrian friendly outdoor lifestyle precincts.
The paper said issues of waste storage and collection were critical to the overall amenity and commerciality of these two areas.
“Historically, council performed waste collection on a regular basis,” the paper said.
“However, with the advent of user pays, business owners were given the opportunity to source their own collection contractors.
“The current situation is that independent contractors vie for collection and the service is provided subject to the independent requirements of each collection service.
“Each laneway has become a depository for various size bins collected at various times and on various collection cycles.
“Each provider will have a contract for waste collection varying from one year onwards and in most cases the contracts will be on the basis of an automatic renewal basis.
“Unless the business owner terminates the service in accordance with the terms of the contract at a particular time, the contract will automatically renew for a further period.”