CONSCIENTIOUS residents make up an army of litter pickers in Altrincham – but one volunteer said the scourge of overflowing bins and rubbish is impacting on their goodwill and the town as a whole.

Kevin Parker has volunteered as a litter picker with Our Altrincham for the past three years and has also organised litter picking in Stamford Park.

On Sunday, nine volunteers braved the cold and collected 38 bags of litter, which equated to 21 hours of volunteering time.

Kevin said: “Whilst the volunteers did an amazing job, the issue of overflowing litter bins, lack of new bins and poor litter management from Amey added extra work for the volunteers, which should have been undertaken by Amey as they are the “paid for” contractor.

“My issue is with Amey management, as the under resourced and over worked Amey staff are doing a sterling job considering the daily pressures they face.”

Kevin said volunteers have collected 1,803 bags of litter in total.  With each bag weighing approx 3kg, these volunteers have cleared 5.4tonnes of litter from Altrincham's streets - the same weight as an elephant.

“The issue of overflowing litter bins and litter in Altrincham remains an issue that is having an impact on businesses, the environment and the goodwill of local volunteers and voluntary groups,” he added.

Kevin had a meeting with Amey back in February regarding the state of Altrincham’s streets and had been told that One Trafford was still working on plans to map all bin locations, to take action on high footfall areas and target known problem areas.

But said he has failed to see any progress or improvement in litter management. “In fact, quite the opposite has been experienced with two litter bins being removed in Oxford Road and Railway Street,” he added.

“Considering these areas and Lloyd Street is a main route for take away restaurants and bars, this has now generated additional litter to an existing problem area for litter with no bins being available.

“Communication with Amey has recently changed too. In the past when tweets were sent to highlight overflowing bins or litter problems, the standard response was “Details will be passed to our contracts department”. However, over recent months Amey do not seem motivated or interested to reply to these tweets highlighting concerns from local residents and businesses.

“To ensure accusations of “unsubstantiated, uncorroborated or lacking evidence” could not be made against me, all of my tweets include “date stamped” photographs including a location of the litter issue. Other residents and businesses have used social media to vent their frustrations too.”

One Trafford said that the bin on Railway Street was replaced in September and that the bin on Oxford Road has been removed at the request of the takeaway, due to its proximity. An alternative location has been identified.

A One Trafford spokesperson said: “The One Trafford Partnership takes all concerns raised regarding street cleansing seriously and has processes in place to ensure that residents can voice any concerns that they may have regarding any of the services that we deliver.

“There are over 1,600 litter bins in Trafford and the answer is not always to keep adding new bins, responsibility to use them sits with residents and the BeResponsible campaign works hard to change the behaviour of residents who think that it is acceptable to drop litter.

“Following concerns that were raised earlier in the year, additional resources have been put in place in Altrincham over recent months especially over the busy weekend period to ensure that litter bins are emptied on a regular basis. 

"There is also a full service review currently taking place to ensure that the most effective cleansing service is in place across Trafford.  All litter bins have now been mapped across the borough and this information has been used to establish new working schedules for the emptying of litter bins. 

"In addition, a trial starts in December where litter bins will be tagged and scanned by operatives each time a bin is emptied.

“The One Trafford Partnership understands how important communication with residents is and as such as launched a ‘One Trafford’ Twitter handle. 

"This allows staff based locally in Trafford to look into and answer any concerns that residents may have.  Previously, tweets were handled at a national level within Amey, which may have resulted in a delay in staff working locally in Trafford been made aware of any concerns. 

"The Twitter handle is now monitored by staff or work alongside the operational teams.  We do encourage however that where there are genuine concerns regarding a service such as litter bin emptying, the issue is logged either online or through the contact centre to ensure that a service ticket is created and so the issue can be resolved in-line with the appropriate timescales.

“The litter bin on Railway Street was replaced in September and the bin on Oxford Road was removed at the request of a local business.  This bin will be replaced however.”