Well done for taking on the local council
I WOULD like to say well done to Catherine Maddy for sticking to her fight with her local council as reported in the Western Mail (“Woman taken to court wins waste fight with council”, June 23). It could not have been an easy choice to fight, even knowing you were innocent of blame.
The cloth-eared people who run our councils these days seem not to be able to understand or accept that bins can be tampered with.
Councils, it seems, can get away with such a low burden of proof. People put their bins out onto the public footpath, the council is responsible for this area. Therefore, once the bins are in a space designated for this purpose, surely they should become the council’s responsibility. After all, who would the council hold responsible for wrongdoing in a tower block, where everything goes down a chute?
From time to time Cardiff council sends out letters (always containing very threatening wording), telling you how and when bins go out and need to be taken back in. They designate someone in the house to be the fall guy, if things go wrong.
I have complained to local councillors about the tone of these letters, and asked who the council deems responsible in student accommodation. Normally these HMOs house at least six individuals but, it seems, the councillors can’t answer whether any of the occupants are held responsible for any wrongdoing.
A few years ago we had an incident where a woman drove from another area to dump bags of some very smelly stuff outside houses in our area. My wife alerted me as she heard the bags being dumped. I went outside and shouted to the woman, who was dumping more down the street, to come back and collect the rubbish, but she got in her car and drove away very quickly.
Her big mistake was leaving envelopes with her name and address in the bags. The enforcement team took the letters, but told me I should have stopped the bin men collecting the bags, but people would have needed to give these bags a wide berth until they called.
Mr Francis Spragg Cathays, Cardiff