Westminster Against Dirty Money Charter
- April 2024
Background
The council’s neighbourhood strategy sets out that a successful, sustainable neighbourhood will:
- be clean and well cared for by the community and the council
- feel safe to live in and move around
- contain community facilities and activities that cater for the needs of its community
- have local people who take responsibility for their own lives and those of their families
- have lively challenging community organisations that champion the needs of the people and the neighbourhood.
Recent changes in two front line services have set out to enhance the implementation of these objectives through:
- More effective local problem solving and collaborative working internally and externally
- Ensuring quantitative and qualitative information is used to ensure neighbourhood working reflects the needs of each neighbourhood
- reducing demand
- proving a dedicated resource to work with communities and partners
- using tools such as neighbourhood agreements
These two agreements are focussing on proactive activity to “switch off” recurring problems and encourage residents to take greater ownership of their neighbourhoods.
Arlington area neighbourhood agreement – case study
In 2013, council officers and partners worked closely with residents to develop a neighbourhood agreement which outlined priorities and actions that the council, partners and residents could take to improve the area.
The area was chosen as a pilot, because of the density of terraced properties & narrow roads, the level of houses in multiple occupation with many let to students, and prevalence of bins left on the street.
In developing the agreement, residents identified one of their issues as tackling bins left on the highway.
The Arlington neighbourhood agreement was launched in June 2013 and since then, there has been a wide range of actions:
- Residents promoting “placing your bin within arm’s length of the highway” and work with the waste collection service to support this
- Use of the student union twitter page to promote being a good neighbour and things to consider when living off campus
- Promoting the neighbourhood agreement to private landlords
- Targeted waste and recycling activities to promote understanding of council services
- Promotion of “Tell us about it” when bins on the street cause a concern
- Issuing a letter to households reminding them of their responsibility.
- Up to date information available on the council’s website about collections and recycling
- Targeting problem streets and carrying out door step calls to identify if any issue prevents a householder taking their bin in.
- Offering a smaller/larger bin scheme
- Offering assisted collection.
- Carrying out regular monitoring of households who fail to comply with requests to remove the bin.
- Introduced issuing a warning notice of intent to remove to bin as abandoned.
- Introduced issuing bin number stickers to households.
These approaches recognise the existing council procedures and new approaches to reach individuals who may not know what are expected, available options, promoting taking pride in the area.
The neighbourhood officer has worked closely with the Arlington neighbourhood agreement group and owing to the large volume of bins left out, has focused on 3 roads covering 200+ households. With the removal of abandoned bins in early March 2014 the impact on the area has received compliments from residents and councillors who felt that “The streets look better than they had for years.”
Whilst the council could also take enforcement action by issuing a fixed penalty notice, this has not been necessary to date. It is hoped that, using a collaborative approach, a change in behaviour will be achieved resulting in a more sustainable solution.
The Arlington area neighbourhood agreement can be found here.
To discuss Neighbourhood working in Norwich, please contact Bob Cronk, Head of local neighbourhood services at [email protected] or Adrian Akester, Head of citywide services at [email protected].
