Cllr Aarti Wadhwani secures action on rubbish for West Hampstead residents

At this month's Full Council meeting, Cllr Aarti Wadhwani spoke out on behalf of West Hampstead residents about issues of rubbish and dirty streets. In her question to the Cabinet Member for Planning and a Sustainable Camden, she asked:

“Residents across West Hampstead continue to report rubbish bags on streets, dirty pavements and restaurant waste leaking onto the pavement, despite repeated complaints to the Council. Given that the current waste contract has several years left to run, and the contractor is apparently meeting its KPIs, does the Cabinet Member accept that this exposes a more fundamental problem: that the contract’s performance measures are not fit for purpose nor do they reflect residents’ lived experience?”

As well as highlighting the problems with the council's current waste contract, Cllr Wadhwani asked a supplementary question on how the current problems will translate into lessons learned to ensure that the next waste contract delivers a better quality service for Camden residents. She asked:

“Given the evident gap between the contract’s reported performance and residents’ experience on the ground, what lessons is the Council now gathering from the shortcomings of the current waste contract to ensure that the next contract is designed around what residents actually expect: clean streets, reliable collections and effective action on commercial waste ensuring that future performance measures reflect residents’ experience in West Hampstead, rather than simply whether a contractor has met technical KPIs?”

Through raising these issues, Cllr Aarti Wadhwani was able to secure a walkabout with the Cabinet Member, where she and the other West Hampstead councillors will show him first-hand the scale of the problem and what measures must be put in place to fix it for the future.