THURROCK Council has claimed that a car park that had been left in a filthy and disgusting state over the summer is in fact cleaned every week.
On July 21st, YT was interviewing close to the Thames Road car park near Argent Street when we noticed how filthy it was. We duly filmed the litter as you can see from below. One of the items was a discarded Canon photocopier.
A couple of weeks later, Grays councillor, John Kent tweeted from the location and expressed his disgust at the state of the car park. As you can see, the “offending” Canon photocopier was still there.
And this was Thames Road car park, in Grays, this morning. pic.twitter.com/KMcbVVIuZ1
— John Kent (@TheJohnKent) August 5, 2018
A week after that, a Grays tweeter, @Harehartley1 expressed their disgust at the state of the car park (guess what, photocopier still there!).
@thurrockcouncil @yourthurrock been there 3 weeks Thames road car park. Drug dealers there every night in the car park no police action no clean up from council. Beach park never cleaned by park attendant to busy sitting in his car every day. pic.twitter.com/SfqL3hZSWZ
— 👍 (@harehartley1) August 18, 2018
Finally, on August 24th, YT went down to the car park and once again, filmed a filthy car park. As you can see, it was still filthy (including our favourite photocopier).
On Saturday August 25th, we asked Thurrock Council the following questions.
“What (if anything) is preventing Thurrock Council from cleaning Thames Road Car Park?
“Do you agree that its presence undermines your “Clean It Cut It Fill It” campaign and reduces it to a series of meaningless soundbites?”.
Thurrock Council gave us a detailed response on Monday September 3rd.
Cllr Aaron Watkins, Portfolio Holder for Environment, said: “Litter picks take place in the Thames Road car park on a weekly basis with cleansing, and the collection of larger fly-tipped items, taking place every three months.
“There is no excuse for anyone to use car parks as a dumping ground for their waste. Arranging for bulky waste to be collected is a simple matter of booking a collection online through the thurrock.gov.uk website. Alternatively the Linford Household Waste and Recycling Centre is open 8am-5pm – or until 4pm in the winter – seven days a week.”
Fly-tipped waste can be reported at https://www.thurrock.gov.uk/fly-tipping/report-fly-tipping .
Red faces at TBC, but if they are assigning street cleansing staff to do the work then more red faces there!!!!
There are many more hotspots around the borough, cut it and clean it ain’t working!!!!
Wake up people.
The council are not clearing this like they say.
No one cares – not the council, not the police and least of all the scum who drug deal and fly tip.