Viewpoint: Councillor refutes claim Tivoli being 'rewarded for failure'

Email Viewpoint letters to jamesp@baylismedia.co.uk or write to Viewpoint, Maidenhead Advertiser, Newspaper House, 48 Bell Street, Maidenhead, SL6 1HX.

Tivoli are not being rewarded for failure

On page 3 of last week’s Advertiser your reporter, who covered the relevant cabinet meeting, quotes both myself and a resident of Windsor, Ed Wilson, who made a damning statement about the council’s decision to increase the payment to our contractor Tivoli.

Readers will recall that Mr Wilson led a campaign last year to stop us moving the black bin collection to fortnightly.

Residents however worked with us, and waste reduced by 18 per cent, recycling increased from 51 per cent to 55.7 per cent and food waste from 2,500 tonnes to 4,600 tonnes.

Yes, last year Tivoli performed badly, as did most suppliers in this market as a result of shortage of labour and spare parts for their machinery.

Quite rightly they were called in to overview and scrutiny to explain what had happened and what they were doing.

Both we and Tivoli worked hard to understand the issues and what could be done. One of our options was of course to go out to tender but it was apparent that the issues affected all suppliers, and the likely result would be a very big increase in cost and possibly a new and untried supplier.

This year there has again been issues, driven by the exceptional weather conditions, but again no supplier of services like these would have been able to cope.

We therefore made the decision to stay with Tivoli but to work together to understand what we would need to pay to achieve the required level of service.

We are not rewarding them for failure but following advice from officers and looking at the costs now being incurred in comparative councils we have agreed a new level of charges which we believe are lower than we would incur going out to tender.

These charges will be effective from next year and both myself and officers will be working closely with Tivoli to make sure they meet our and residents’ requirements.

Councillor David Coppinger

Cabinet Member for Environmental Services, Parks Countryside and Maidenhead

Closing the door after the horse has bolted

News that the council were consulting on a tall buildings strategy for Maidenhead had overtones of the stable door and bolted horse.

Councillors had long ago approved 10 storeys at Cooper Square, 19 at The Landing and 25 as part of the Nicholsons redevelopment.

Permissions have continued with 11 storeys on the Magnet site at St Cloud Way.

It's true the council were obliged to produce the strategy document.

They were under instruction from the Government's planning inspector as part of her approval of the local plan. And they are obliged to consult.

It's true too that the strategy reflects the inspector's opinion that tall buildings, of a scale more suited to major city centres, are simply not appropriate in Maidenhead – a view shared by the Civic Society and many who care about the future of our town.

But in the same breath the document accommodates the approvals given for the tower blocks in separate caveats.

Just another example, if one were needed, that planning should be above politics.

Bob Dulson

Chairman

Maidenhead Civic Society

Missed opportunity to include bus terminal

A great opportunity has been importantly missed in the town centre of Maidenhead.

While planning and construction has been started, the planners should have included a bus terminal (station/terminus) instead of a piazza.

This would have been an asset to the town centre alongside towns such as Reading, Slough and High Wycombe I could go on.

The bus terminal would have brought shoppers local and afar to the town centre which is much needed to allow our town to grow as we would all like.

This would also reduce the need for multi-storey car parks which would be a serious bonus to our town’s security needs.

Keith Goodwin

Address supplied

Maidenhead

Fears reawakened by low outbound flights

Hi Heathrow,

The Queen is no longer resident – but Prince William and his family are.

It is also a world tourist destination.

It’s in a so-called ‘no fly zone’ – a total joke.

Then there are the residents, with many thousand of inbound flights, the town is blighted by noise.

And we all know where the outbounds should be flying.

So you just ignore all of these factors.

You fail, and fail again, to consider the residents of Windsor.

The plane is in the wrong place, something is going wrong.

We all know what can happen with planes having trouble when getting airborne.

You just reawaken the worst fears.

This is the 89th low flight incident this year.

Andrew Hall

Address supplied