City Hall pores over whether dog fouling should be tackled with more bins or "behaviour change"
Belfast councillors are requesting more dog litter bins across Belfast, despite City Hall officials stating the issue is “behavioural change”.
At a Belfast City Council committee meeting this week, DUP Councillor Ruth Brooks and Green Councillor Anthony Flynn made a repeated call for further roll out and asked for a report by council officers at City Hall detailing progress on the matter.
A council officer said a tender was live looking at repairing the current stock of dog fouling bins but said a new wave of bins would be “a huge project” for the council.
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At the monthly meeting of the People and Communities Committee, the Chairperson Councillor Brooks said: “I am very conscious it has been a full year since myself and Councillor Flynn brought a motion to the committee asking for specific dog fouling bins in a bid to provide solutions to the ongoing dog fouling issues that is blighting the city.
“We had made a number of requests around a trial period in the four quarters of the city, with a cost benefit analysis and a benchmark across other councils. My question is whether officers have engaged with other councils, and have there been areas marked out based on data.”
She asked officers: “Have you been able to decide what sort of bins will be looked at, and has a preliminary cost been drafted?”
A council officer replied: “We have a live tender to provide different types of street bins that can be used. A particular issue that was raised was lamppost bins.
“The only query we would have is about making them specific to dog fouling - emptying them and cleaning them out can be a problem in terms of staffing. We have no issue with lamppost bins, or encouraging people to use the bins, particularly where there are areas with a lot of dog fouling.
"But we would ask that a bin would be mixed waste, like any street bin, which would take litter and dog fouling, which is in line for what we would have with the rest of our street bins.
“In terms of the cost, we have not looked at any particular pilot areas yet. But we are very happy to engage back with members of the feasibility of areas.”
Councillor Brooks said: “I have been working with Walkway Community Centre over a segment of the Comber Greenway which has horrendous issues with dog fouling. Walkway are forever having to design posters and other things to get people to pick up after their dogs.
“What came up was the potential use of dog fouling bins. I know from data that they are no sooner cleaned than they are filled up again, and there are issues around that.”
She added: “We put in the proposal a year ago, and I know things take a wee bit of time to come through council, but we have to go back to people and say what stage we are at.”
The council officer said: “The Comber Greenway is the Stormont Department for Infrastructure, and not ourselves, so we do very limited cleansing in relation to that. But we will happily look at that and other areas.”
Councillor Anthony Flynn said: “I was down at Billy Neill Country Park, and as soon as you go in, there is a dog fouling bin with dog poo bags (provided) beside it. That is one way of doing it.
“In Lisburn and Castlereagh they have street bins, and they have a separate collection. They are the sorts of things I would like to see in a report that we can discuss.
“If we have very simple options we can ask which is the one for us. Because at the end of the day it is what we will be getting out of it, and what we should be getting out of it is reduced dog fouling on our streets.”
The council officer said: “The tender we have in place is to replace ones that are broken at the minute or need repairs. To do a wholesale change of the scale of street bins would be a huge project as a council.
“We could look at particular areas, but the big issue with dog fouling moving forward is behaviour change. That behavioural aspect, whether we put new bins in or not, may continue after that.” He said it was dog fouling bins was “not an easy collection route for staff.”
SDLP Councillor Gary McKeown said: “I obviously look forward to hearing the options coming forward, but I would argue that the areas where we find the greatest issues are areas where there aren’t existing street bins, largely because they are highly urbanised, narrow pavements, where there isn’t the capacity to install the standard street bins.
“So I think the lamppost bins are something we should be looking at, because it is that desert between street bins where you find most of the dog fouling. Obviously yes there is a degree of behavioural change required, but providing the capacity in terms of accessible bins will hopefully drive some of that behavioural change.”
He said: “It isn’t just necessarily a case of replacing like with like. It is about looking at where the problems are, particularly in those highly urbanised, densely packed areas where there are real issues around dog fouling.”
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