Composting facility will take weekly green bin collections

It's been confirmed that there will be weekly green bin collections including food from next April, not fortnightly as SITA have been telling residents.

At the Parish Council meeting at Tormarton on Monday, SITA said their plans were based on fortnightly green bin collections, with food being collected in green bins one week, black bins the next.

Lib Dem councillors queried this with Council officers, as the Council has committed to weekly green bin collections from April 2009. It's now been confirmed that SITA's plans should accommodate weekly collections.

Claire Young has asked for SITA to provide revised vehicle movement figures as a matter of urgency.

Latest bus service proposals from First Bus

Coalpit Heath - The X42 which goes via the M32 will be retained, giving one express service an hour, but off-peak buses will be reduced from 4 buses per hour to 3 as both the X30 and X40 will be withdrawn. The X30 will be replaced by the new 327, which will go into Bristol via Frenchay hospital.

Frampton Cotterell - There will now be no express service as the X30, which goes via the M32, will be replaced by the new 327 which will operate via Hicks Common and Frenchay.

Iron Acton - The new X27 service via the M32 will replace the 328 and within the village buses will avoid the High Street due to parking problems there.

Composting application presentation at Tormarton PC

Last night SITA gave a presentation about their In-Vessel Composting application and answered questions about it at the Tormarton Parish Council meeting. Claire Young attended along with fellow Lib Dem Councillors Sue Hope and Sarah Turley.

The questions were wide ranging and topics included:

Choice of site - SITA acknowledged this wasn't ideal, being in the Green Belt and the AONB, and that an industrial site would be better, but this was the result of a long search. They did secure planning permission at a site in Avonmouth but that area is changing rapidly and moving from heavy industry to warehousing. They also agreed a more central location would be preferable, but again argued there was a lack of alternatives.

Back up plans - They are still looking at alternatives and would withdraw this application if a better site became available.

Timing of application - SITA are now looking to put in the planning application towards the end of July.

Enclosing the tunnels in a building - They are reviewing with DEFRA whether they should enclose the tunnels but operationally this wouldn't be as good.

Vermin - Nothing stays still in the open for more than 8 hours, during which time there’d be too much movement of vehicles for animals to want to go on site. There will be baiting stations around the site, it will be fenced and the whole area kept clean.

Odours - The Agrivert spokesman claimed residents wouldn’t even know this site was there.

Bioaerosols - These will be monitored before and after the site is commissioned.

Claire Young asked about:

• The inclusion of cardboard, which isn't treated at Agrivert's Edmonton IVC. Agrivert assured the meeting that they had learnt their lessons at their open windrow site in Oxfordshire, which takes cardboard, although he didn't elaborate on how these lessons would be applied at this site.


• The market for the end product - Agrivert insisted farmers were falling over themselves for the compost.


• Whether the predicted vehicle movements allowed for taking waste from other authorities, which they said it did.

Local roadworks

In the coming weeks there wil be several sets of roadworks that might slow your journey locally:

• From 9th to 11th June there will be a trench surface repair on the Badminton Road/Station Road A432 from near the railway bridge to Stover Road. This will require off-peak traffic signals and lane width restrictions.
  
• The railway bridge on Westerleigh Road, Westerleigh will have two way traffic lights on 12 June while the bridge is inspected.


• The A4174 Ring Road between the Bromley Heath roundabout and the Wick Wick roundabout will have lane closures for approximately 12 weeks from the end of June for essential bridge strengthening

Have Your Say surgery tomorrow

Don't forget that tomorrow local Councillors Pat and Dave Hockey and Claire Young will be holding a surgery at the Brockeridge Centre from 10.30-12.30 for anyone who wants to discuss their responses to the "Core Strategy" consultation.

Phone boxes under threat

Many of our local phone boxes are threatened by a BT plan to remove all "uneconomic" phone boxes from our streets, whether they are needed for emergency purposes or not.

The following phone boxes are under threat in the Ladden-Frome area:

Henfield Road, Coalpit Heath
North Road, Yate
Sundays Hill Lane, Falfield
Charfield Hill, Charfield
Little Bristol Lane, Charfield
Court Road, Leyhill
Longcross, Cromhall
Heathend, Cromhall
outside the old Post Office, Westerleigh
At the layby, Stover Road, Yate
Codrington

Since 2002 BT has removed 31,000 kiosks around the UK.

The Evening Posts reports the phone box story here.

Composting drop-in sessions - today and tomorrow!

Drop-in sessions will be held on Tuesday 3rd and Wednesday 4th June at Tormarton Parish hall between 6pm-8pm. SITA will be in attendance at the Wednesday session.