A grassy walk in Peterborough
Tag: environment
Peterborough’s nappy app
Yesterday, inspired by comments about walking by Ch Ali Shan, I smashed a personal best (PB). I completed a hyper leaflet drop. I knew it would be tough, so I decided to use a smart phone app called mapmywalk.
I was thinking I could picture my leaflet drop to produce something shareable with the team (we’d just broken all our leafletting records over the weekend) and that this would be fun for me on a tough day and we might end up with something we could all use. I don’t go nuts for personal performances or PBs (well, not usually!) but the mapping bit could turn out to be extremely useful. But I’d already set off, before deciding to give it a go and downloaded the app on the go. (I wouldn’t do that usually.) So I began with an inaccuracy: a bit of real walk not covered by the walk being built by the app.
Doing this properly, you’d have to decide: what is the start of the drop: where you start delivering, or your home?
As I went, I found good things to snap:
And you can’t go anywhere in Peterborough now without finding ghastly things on pavements. The stuff we can’t live with and before it has done a job is no longer worth the cost of disposal to people who value what cash they can get. I now report there and then, using: FixMyStreet, which has much more functionality than MyPeterborough which, despite being a very poor and unresponsive (i.e. the app developers don’t respond to user queries) app, is the only one listed on the council’s website. Here are some of the horrible things walkers come across every day in Peterborough:
You can pause the “walk” on the app and resume, so as keep the walk part look like an actual walk and the stop and do things or chat to people not look like part of the “walk”. If it were possible to do this correctly, the app would give you an accurate average speed for when you were really walking. It sounds easy, but every time I did something like reporting a discarded pct and then the mouldy chair without remembering to pause the app each time, there would be an impact on my “walk’s” average speed and my results would get less and less true.
In fact, yesterday, I think as I pressed resume, just after the mouldy chair by the bus stop and the public toilets which have been closed for over a decade, I lifted my head, ready to go and a massive training lorry swung swung into a small tree in front of my eyes. There are moments when apps are not even in your consciousness.
But once or twice I also forgot to resume until I was several hundred yards from where I’d stopped. This error is funny because the app creates something which looks like a flight path on the “walk”. When I did this and turned a corner, the app would draw a flight path straight through a house. And when I stopped in The Crown for a coffee (yes, they do), the app stayed there long after I’d set off again, sat and maybe dozing in front of the fire, improving my average as I walked on and on without using any time, and waiting for another short flight.
I wonder if a pedometer rather than a route mapper would have worked better for me, or maybe one which does both? Because unless you are delivering to homes with very long driveways, the app doesn’t see the little sideways ducks and dives from the pavement to the letterboxes. That is OK if what you are mapping is an ordinary walk. But a leaflet drop is something else.
People look down on leafletting or assume (sometimes at their peril) that it is easy. In fact it isn’t easy: it is very physical and the best footwear would probably be cross trainers. It isn’t just the walking: it is the sharp turns round gates, bending down to letterboxes, some of them at ground level. Leafletting certainly gives your whole body a workout. This is why councillors ask people to help them deliver and promise them they can shrink their waistlines. This promise is actually true. It is also hard on the knees, because if you walk fast your body needs to change direction fast.Which app best describes this sort of activity?
As for today, I might write a bit and check on my seedlings or if my legs can cope, I might pop down to the Real Nappy Library, who are doing their bit to reduce landfilled nappies in Central Park today till 2pm.
Leaflets in snow and hail
The forecast was dire: rain and low temperatures. And a massive black cloud did come along and snowed on us and one very delighted little girl. Hail followed. But we stayed warm (oddly, it wasn’t all that cold). And we kept posting leaflets into letterboxes. But it was one of those days when focussing on broken bins and flytipped furniture and electrics was particularly difficult. The ghastly truth is that people (including me) get used to rubbish in their environment and we literally have no choice but to keep moving: to pass it by. We’d never do anything if we dealt with every bit. But sometimes the weather and the lovely stuff steals the show and that is what this afternoon was like. So here’s a photo narrative. The moon was in at least three photos, but now I can only find it in one. I stumbled on a beautiful red camellia in full flower in a south facing garden and some pelargoniums: they looked a bit dry but warm and also in full bloom but I didn’t photograph them.
7th – 11th March Stamford’s Bright Green Energy Show 2016
This could be interesting and useful.
The Gallery: Stamford Arts Centre
10am to 8pm – Monday 7th March to Saturday 12th March
Admission free to all events
Come and find out how to use less energy, save money, live more sustainably and help to improve your environment.
The show combines an exhibition and evening events looking at energy saving measures and renewable technologies. Specialist local businesses will display a range of energy saving products including the new Nissan Leaf electric car.
Other events during the week include:
Monday 7th March
7-9pm – The Gallery: launch and reception.
Tuesday 8th March
11am – 12.30am – Whitwell Passivhaus, tour and talk. Call 01780 460457 to book a space on the tour. More information available here.
7-9pm – The Gallery: A selection of films on the environment and sustainable living. More information available here.
Friday 11th March
7-9pm – The Gallery: Illustrated talks on Low Energy design…
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What about the Lido?
I attended a workshop hosted by Civic Voice and as a result have joined a Peterborough “Asset of Community Value” group founded at the workshop. The workshop explained how an “asset of community value” can be registered with the local council and what that means should it be or become threatened. The rules were explained and what and what was not eligible.
The new group is not a “political” group in that peoples’ views on the legislation may be strong, but those views are not the point. I would describe this as a “technical” alliance between people prepared to share knowledge and help people in Peterborough who want to do this. I was quite shocked to learn that Peterborough has only registered two Assets of Community Value (the Green Backyard and the Football Ground) whereas Chelmsford identified seventy which needed to be registered.
What about the Lido? We need a little list.
Cllr Andy Coles acted as spokesperson for the Peterborough group at the workshop and he was an obvious elected councillor lead. For those who don’t know him he is a keen supporter of The Green Backyard and used to be its beekeeper. He has also supported the parishing of Westwood (a project currently in abeyance, but which I strongly support) and he currently holds the council’s “community” brief.
Alun Williams volunteered to look after the membership.
You can join the new group on face book. You will then be added to a google group.
Peterborough Green Festival 2015
Solar Eclipse in Peterborough
incineration decision: letter to ward councillors
Today I wrote in the following terms to my ward councillors, copying in my MP.
mass burn incinerator for household waste
I invite your comments on how you have protected the interests of the residents of my ward and of the city in the years since 2007 in this matter.
Should the council reconsider what it is doing: What would the costs of pulling out of this contract be today? And tomorrow (assuming it is signed tomorrow)?
Have you checked whether or not the council considered options other than incineration? What evidence of careful consideration of other options are you relying on? Are you aware that the council has been consistently challenged on this since 2007, (and possibly earlier)?
Are you aware that the business cases for incineration in general and for this particular incinerator are both now being challenged as unsafe (the economy and the market having changed substantially)? Have you considered the financial impact on council tax payers should these cautions turn out to be well founded? And that if the business performs as badly as expected are you aware of the likely impact on recycling, too?
Has the contract been set up in such a way that it can attract structural or grant funding? Or has it been set up in such a way that it is ineligible?
Are you aware of the total cost of this contract? Figures of £76M and £80M have been quoted recently in the Peterborough Evening Telegraph for the capital costs alone. Is that figure current? What are the overall 30 year costs for this project? Is it acceptable that this information is still not in the public domain? Is it acceptable that innocent readers of their local paper might assume that this figure is the total cost of the project?
Are you aware that the council is deliberately choosing out of date technology and describing it as “tried and tested”? (the information on technology is still not in the public domain).
Are you aware that the council might be comparing the energy recovery of its own plant with Scandinavian examples? If so are you aware that in Scandinavia (which is used to colder weather and historically much more aware of the importance of insulation and energy security) high performance hot water supply grids are planned in (eg for swimming pools or district heating). Peterborough has not planned a supply grid and has not explained who will buy energy and power generated by this incinerator. Have you seen an example of the output and recovery figures from either Peterborough’s as planned and have you compared that with an operational equivalent in Scandinavia and an operational equivalent in the UK (local campaigners are finding that those in the UK can’t sell their power).
Are you aware that the UK’s statutory regulatory regime for air pollution (in which the council has placed its trust) is widely regarded as unfit for purpose? The Health Protection Agency is about to undertake research into whether or not it can substantiate the assurances and claims it has been making and upon which the Environment Agency and numerous councils have historically relied. Is the council aware of the potential damage it could do to its own Environment Capital “aspiration” if, as widely expected, it can’t?
Do you know enough about air pollution and monitoring in the city? Does Peterborough monitor anything other than road traffic? Where are the monitoring stations and are they in the right places? What regime is planned for when the incinerator is operational?
Have you considered the social, health and cost impacts on the city of a mass burn incinerator in an area with very high (and rising) levels of social deprivation?
Are you aware that a new incinerator on an industrial site in Fletton is operating and is apparently making people ill, but that the council has not done anything about it, and that not one person amongst the “officers’ panel” and members present at the Sustainable Growth and Environment Capital Scrutiny Committee Call in Meeting on 29th August was equipped to advise the ward councillor who asked about this problem in his ward? I understand that the ward councillor had been told by the Environment Agency that it was a matter for the council. As a member of the public I witnessed that not a single person actually knew how to deal with this relatively small problem – nobody offered to look into it or explain who the ward councillor should talk to, if it wasn’t the Environment Agency. This is despite the presence of senior council officers and (at least) three lawyers.
Are you satisfied with the monitoring and regulation of pollution in the city?
Please can Richard Olive have answers to the questions which Peterborough Friends of the Earth has asked the council on this matter?
Can you write NONE against – or otherwise provide detail of any personal, family or party interest you have had, have or are likely to have – in any of the following:
- the council’s Energy Services Company?
- “Blue Sky”?
- this sector?
- this decision?
I look forward to hearing from you, etc.
Scrutiny committee doesn’t ask if disclosure could be in the public interest
A meeting of a committee with a very long name: Sustainable Growth and Environment Capital Scrutiny Committee held on Wednesday 13th June, 2012 at 7.00 pm Bourges Viersen Room, Town Hall. may turn out to be the last committee able to interrogate or discuss Peterborough City Council’s plans to build an incinerator, a so-called “Energy from Waste (EfW) plant” before an executive decision is taken by the deputy leader in consultation with the Waste 2020 Project Board (whose recommendations and minutes I believe are not published – please put a link in a comment if you find them!). If this committee does not “call-in” the decision the council is expected to proceed with incineration plans which still can’t be examined by the public.
Documents showing council’s current thinking and a brief history of its proposal for an EfW plant has been circulated to councillors. These documents reveal that fears which have often been expressed about the city’s recycling (how it does it and how much it does) and even bigger worries about incineration replacing recycling could well be justified.
The EfW plant was discussed at ITEM 5. Waste 2020 Programme- Energy from Waste Facility And Other Associated Works and Services Part of the discussion was to be “exempt”. The agenda item reads as follows, although the highlighting is mine:
“In accordance with Standing Orders, Members are asked to determine whether the update report to be tabled at the meeting relating to agenda item 5. Waste 2020 Programme – Energy From Waste Facility which contains exempt appendices containing information relating to the financial or business affairs of a particular person (including the authority holding that information), as defined by Paragraph 3 of Schedule 12A of Part 1 of the Local Government Act 1972, should be exempt and the press and public excluded from the meeting when these appendices are discussed or whether the public interest in disclosing this information outweighs the public interest in maintaining the exemption.”
I asked from the public seating area that members be given the opportunity to vote on excluding members of the public because the chair seemed to be telling us to leave at the outset of ITEM 5 and without any vote. They were then allowed to vote. The chair also had to be persuaded by council officers that part of ITEM 5 could be discussed in public and that the exclusion could follow discussion of that part rather than apply to the whole item.
However no discussion took place in this committee on the relative merits of the “public interest in disclosing” as opposed to the “public interest in maintaining the exemption” and it was not clear to me that members of the committee understood that standing orders provided them with an opportunity to debate the relative pros and cons of sharing the information with the public. The chair of the committee refused to let me raise this.
The public interest in disclosing is overwhelming in my view. I believe that this committee was led by its chair into a breach of its own standing orders by not having any debate about where the balance of public interest lay: whether it was better for the city to have disclosure or not. Members of the committee were simply not asked to contribute their thoughts on the subject or debate it before they were asked to vote.
For some members of the newly formed opposition (Independent/Labour) this was their first time sitting on this committee. I don’t know how they felt but I was in a state of mild shock by the time we were thrown out.
Peterborough City Council’s call-in procedure
requires two members of a scrutiny committee to complete a form explaining the reasons for a call-in (eg failure to follow due process). The affected committee (the one within whose remit the decision takes place) then has to meet within 10 days to uphold the call-in or recommend action.
Other councils’ procedures: Hackney Hertsmere Laudably, Thurrock Council provides for both its elected Members and the public to call-in these decisions prior to implementation.
Peterborough has “suspended” its own call-in procedure on four occasions in 2005
My bank holiday and a filthy fire – two days later
On Bank Holiday Monday I posted a story about a filthy fire. As I said in that post, I had left a message asking the council’s Environmental Health Officer to phone me back. The message was left with the council’s emergency out of hours service.
By 09:40 on Tuesday morning I had not received a phone call, so I phoned the council. The main switchboard told me that the council did not have an Environmental Health Officer (see Note 1 below) and asked me what my call was about. She wanted to know whether to direct my call to “pollution” or “safety”. I opted for pollution.
By chance I was put through to the “pollution officer” for my district. He told me that he was one of three pollution officers for the unitary authority area of Peterborough. He hadn’t received my message from the emergency out of hours service (and as I write this post he hasn’t emailed me to tell me he’s found it), so I briefed him on what had happened. How the fire service had put the fire out once toxic materials were found on it. And he confirmed that burning the kinds of items described would constitute an offence under the Clean Air Act
I asked him about the council’s out of hours service which fails to provide a mechanism for either putting out a toxic fire, getting council staff to the event, or even reporting it, or even getting a message through. He explained that there would be a high level decision determining spending on this service and that he would try to help me understand where that decision had been made. Meanwhile he said that the emergency services should certainly be called if all else failed. He mentioned how noise nuisances are regularly reported to the police out of hours. He said he would go and inspect the situation. This particular fire I will now stop posting about until I know whether or not the council decides to prosecute.
He rang me back later in the day to report on progress and agreed to ask a colleague to give me a call about how the council had made its decisions about out of hours services. He also told me that the broken links had been fixed and would be correct on the website by the morning.
This morning I checked the links. One has been removed and both pages now point to a single outside link: http://www.environmental-protection.org.uk/neighbourhood-nuisance/garden-bonfires/
So now at least there is a working link to a some garden bonfire content under nuisance. Thank you Peterborough City Council pollution and IT teams!
What the council’s website now points to is content on a charity website. The charity has published this leaflet, with the same content. What do you think? Is this robust enough?
Should the council have its bonfire policy? The leaflet suggests that there isn’t much point. If you want a good, informative source of information on bonfires this response to a FOI request takes a bit of beating. But the messages in that document don’t seem to me to get enough of an airing, nor do they seem to be falling on the waste burners’ ears.
Which could be partly why we have so many filthy fires burning in my area.
Note 1: In December 2010 the council had three, presumably fully qualified officers: http://www.peterborough.gov.uk/PCC/FOI/Docs/foi-10-0539-R.pdf
Fiona Radic 
