One readers views on littering and waste collections in Tenby...

Regarding your recent article ('plagued by fly-tipping') in your paper about litter bins — or the lack of them— around Tenby, and the bin collections for holiday lets - I have owned a holiday let for six years now in Tenby, and in the last 12 months noticed the taking away of the bins around Tenby for takeaway rubbish on the front at North Beach and also around other parts of the town which have added to the litter issues massively.

This would be fine if the amount of day trippers took their rubbish away with them, but they don’t!

Rubbish from takeaway shops is stacked and rammed in the few available bins and this made me wonder why fewer and fewer bins, certainly over the summer season, are now available?

I noticed a local restaurant just last Friday evening tipping lots of glass bottles into the bins on North beach, so local business’ use the few bins too! The answer is I am sure to introduce temporary or overflow bins in strategic areas where there are a lot of takeaway shops?

The shops pay plenty of business rates so need and deserve this service in the summer season. The rest of the time less bins are managed unless there is an event in town, but still it seems pretty mean if you want to encourage tourism to Tenby.

The cuts to local bin collection services seem mean and short sited, is this really the impression you want to give visitors spending large sums of money to have a good holiday?

Tenby isn’t cheap, and frankly it is cheaper to have a week abroad than in the resort here in Tenby when taking into account food and drink costs on top of renting a place in Tenby, so we very much need to nurture and care for our tourists not put them off with the penny pinching of lack of litter bins around the town over the summer.

Regarding black bin bag collection. Most holiday lets in the summer are Saturday to Saturday let, so the black bin collection currently doesn’t work at all, as most bin collections — and there are fewer than two years ago when the scheme set up —only come into town Monday through to Friday. Obviously you cannot leave anything outside in the open for fear of gulls, so bags maybe being collected early on Fridays or sitting in various hall ways for a couple of days until the collection happens when the bag company pop in for the odd black bag in each building, which as I say is expensive to perform).

I have observed that as black bin collectors are not making enough money to come into a pedestrianised town on Saturdays this litter issue is a problem for the land lords who often have to either collect the rubbish themselves if they’re local if the black bags have been missed or just not picked up, or ask their holiday makers to put the black bin out early by their door mid week half way through their stay due to the issue of having to work around the bin bag collector.

It is not at all ideal, and I actually now knock £20 per week off the bill and leave two black bags for my weekly customer, so they can take their rubbish home with them, which is what I myself also do, as trying to get a regular Saturday collection week to week is impossible in Tenby.

A solution for litter would be to bring back summer over flow bins maybe for the takeaway shops? This would work like it used to with regular late/early morning collections by the council (which again from High street I have observed don’t happen twice a day anymore, but maybe once a day early morning and that’s it).

By trying to reduce litter, the taking away of litter bins sadly isn’t the solution as I have seen far more bag fly tipping around town as a result. Surely it makes sense to put recycling bells for glass/plastic and cardboard at the top of North and South beach and empty those daily over the summer? People will use them?

Also black bin bag collection: Why don’t the council charge us say £50 for 50 Blue or red plastic bags and we let our holiday customers fill those and use maybe one designated bin at north and one at south beach with a lock on it for holiday let customers only? Everyone would sign up to this scheme annually, and we could cover the cost between all the holiday lets? That way Pembrokeshire council could send an invoice annually for say £120 to all holiday lets, then we purchase the bags on top, and that way we are covering the costs of the service. I think that would be a good solution and as a business owner myself I can see most holiday lets would happily pay this and not have the hassle of asking holiday lets to take their rubbish away whilst we have somewhere to ask them to put the rubbish before they leave on Saturdays? This also sorts the problem of bin collectors not wanting to stop off in Tenby for odd bags due to cost and inconvenience. Problem sorted!

But will anyone listen to this solution?

Alison Stevenson,

Tenby

Editor’s note: A lot of what you’re saying makes sense. Whether anyone listens, well, that’s a separate issue...

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