Don't blight our square

Karen Hoy - The Argus Tuesday, 21 December, 2004

A CONSERVATION group is asking a council not to blight its beauty spot by installing unsightly communal rubbish and recycling bins.

Roger Hinton, chairman of the Regency Square Area Society, has written to Jenny Rowlands, director of the environment for Brighton and Hove City Council, asking the authority to scrap its refuse proposals for the area. The plan includes introducing large, black communal rubbish and recycling bins.

Mr Hinton has also written to his MP, David Lepper, and ward councillors Dawn Davidson and Roy Pennington.

He said the bins would be untidy and unsightly in the Regency Square area, which includes Cannon Place, Queensbury Mews, Russell and Clarence Squares and Stone and Castle Streets.

He said: "This is a conservation area at the heart of Brighton's conference and tourist industry. Property owners are required to paint their houses in a uniform colour to conserve their period features. The aim is to maintain and improve the appearance of this historic area.

"It seems quite inappropriate to turn the streets into storage areas for rubbish."

The area now has a plastic bag service, which the council has been seeking to replace across the city.

It is rolling out wheelie bins to replace bin bags and communal bins in other areas where wheelie bins are unsuitable.

Members of the society say they support recycling but are unhappy with the proposal to locate containers in streets.

Mr Hinton enclosed with his letter photographs of recycling bins in the Montpelier Crescent area.

The bins are surrounded by piles of dumped bottles, a cooker, cardboard and other waste.

He said: "The appearance of one of Brighton's finest pieces of townscape it ruined by a rubbish tip." Tony Davies, who lives in Vernon Terrace, near the Montpelier Crescent recycling bins, launched a campaign against communal bins earlier this year.

He said: "Even when they are emptied every day, it is clear to anyone not only do the communal bins not work unless extra teams run around cleaning up after them, which of course ends up costing the taxpayers more, but they serve to discourage the important activity of recycling by appealing to the lazy side of human nature.

"It's far easier to chuck everything away in a huge bin rather than sort it for recycling."