A stinker of a letter (From The Wiltshire Gazette and Herald)

A stinker of a letter

2:00pm Saturday 4th August 2012 in Local

A renewed plea for dog
litter bins on open spaces in Marlborough has been ignored by town councillors on the grounds of cost and the need for staff to have health and safety training to handle the bags.
Pensioner Barbara Collins, who lives at St Lukes Court in Hyde Lane, overlooking The Common, made the latest plea in a letter to the town council’s amenities and open spaces committee on Monday. The last request made by a six-year-old girl two or three years ago was similarly disregarded.
Mrs Collins wrote to Coun Marian Hannaford Dobson, complaining about litter including bags of dogs mess which she regularly finds on The Common. She said she and other residents, and St Lukes warden Peter Hussey, had resorted to picking it up themselves, using litter-picking tongs.
In her letter Mrs Collins said: “I recently moved here after living 50 years under Sevenoaks council (Kent) who, even though they faced much greater financial problems than Marlborough, were able to keep their streets clean.”
Mrs Collins said that despite the best efforts of volunteers from St Lukes Court, people were still leaving litter.
“The last time we did the area in Frees Avenue I found four bags of dog mess,” she said.
On Monday town councillors agreed that more bins were needed on The Common but shied away from providing designated bins for dog waste.
Committee chairman Rich Pitts, who told colleagues he was a dog owner, said: “Providing dog specific bins, because of the specialist training the staff would need, puts the costs up tremendously.”
Coun Hannaford Dobson told the meeting that people were
putting bags of dogs mess in the ordinary bins, which the staff had to empty anyway.
While dismissing the idea of providing designated dog mess bins, the committee agreed to leave the question of where extra litter bins are needed to the Commons Forum – a group representing users of the common including dog walkers – at its next meeting in September.