– The meeting also heard that Aberdeenshire Council’s new household waste and recycling centre at Badentoy is now open, from Thursdays to Mondays.
– The new town of Chapelton is progressing slowing with 93 houses occupied.
– The meeting also heard that Aberdeenshire Council’s new household waste and recycling centre at Badentoy is now open, from Thursdays to Mondays.
– The new town of Chapelton is progressing slowing with 93 houses occupied.
Portlethen swimming pool re-opened to the public yesterday (Monday) at 2pm. It had been closed for three weeks to allow for the replacement of the changing room drains.
Bad news for Newtonhill people. My efforts to save the seasonal garden waste service at the Bettridge Centre have not been successful. I know how valued the April to November service has been, but my call for even a reduced service has failed.
Today I received the following response from the council’s waste manager: “I do appreciate the benefits that the service provides to those residents who are able to walk to the collection point, and this would apply to many people living near to household waste and recycling centres where people living nearby are able to use them on foot because they don’t have access to a car or it may be quicker to use a wheelbarrow or wheeled bin than to load/unload and later clean the car. However, as you will appreciate this is a very small number of people within the whole of the Shire and not a service that is available to the majority; we are not looking at accessibility by foot being one of the criteria for provision of sites as unfortunately this would not be something we would have the resources to be able to serve.”
She adds: “We are trying to work towards consistency of service across Aberdeenshire based on some agreed criteria, such as the 20 minutes travel time for most people. There are clearly a number of people in Newtonhill who value this service and we could provide some home composting information/support to the community if that would be of interest; of course to this effect we also sell subsidised good quality compost bins to help people compost at home.”
So, the bin lorry will not return in the spring and we will either have to compost more, take green waste to the new recycling centre at Badentoy (or ask friend/family/neighbour to help), or as a last resort put it in the landfill bin. And landfill is the last thing we as a society should be doing.
The information on this link explains why the council does not provide a doorstep garden waste collection service: https://www.aberdeenshire.gov.uk/waste/other/garden-waste/
Well that was a shock this morning – I fleetingly appeared in Fern Britten’s hour-long interview with Michael Gove on BBC1.
He was talking about his life which included returning to his home city of Aberdeen in the 1980s to be a trainee journalist on the Press and Journal. He and I were photographed on the picket line, with Evening Express reporter Alison Shaw outside the Lang Stracht offices.
We were on strike during 1989-90 over whether Aberdeen Journals workers had the right to be represented by a trade union. The Canadian-owned company used Thatcherite laws to take on the National Union of Journalists. The strike lasted for a year.
Aberdeen Journals has a different owner now.
Portlethen’s new household waste recycling centre is now open. The staff are waiting to greet you!
I also found out more about the impact on the services in the Asda car park. All of the recycling point containers will remain for the moment. The co-mingled blue-lidded bins for recyclates and those for cardboard will stay for now.
The new household waste and recycling centre in Badentoy Industrial Estate, Portlethen AB12 4ZD will open to the public from tomorrow (Thursday 8 December) at the following times:
Thursday, Saturday, Sunday, Monday – 9am to 4:30pm
Friday – 9am to 4pm.
There will be temporary sign at the Badentoy Drive entry to direct users to the new centre.
There will three full-time attendants adopting a ‘meet and greet’ manner to assist and direct site users to the appropriate area for disposal of their items and to hopefully improve their experience on site and increase our recycling performance.
The council’s policy is household waste only and no trade waste or tyres accepted at the site. The re-use facility is currently not available as there is no partnership agreement in place at present.
The previous temporary collection service of general waste located in Asda car park every Saturday ceased on 3 December. There will have a member of staff present at the Asda former site on Saturdays 10 and 19 December to ensure no waste is deposited at that location and to direct any potential users to the new site at Badentoy.
A number of local people rightly complained about AWPR joint venture (CJV) still using water bowsers to clean roads, even when temperatures were plummeting. There were also many complaints about the muddy state of the roads.
Here is what Aberdeenshire Council roads officer Bob Gray has just told me:
“I have been at a meeting with the CJV today regarding the issues raised by yourself and your constituents Mark Neville the CJV T.M. manager has taken an action to reiterate to the workforce that this type of behavior will not be tolerated. Aberdeenshire Council have also stated that the level of complaints being received will not be tolerated. Police Scotland were also present at the meeting along with Transport Scotland who are both aware of the situation.
“We will continue to monitor the situation but we emphasised that the situation with regard to mud on the road must be addressed or we will take action under the Roads Scotland Act 1984.”
A few local issues at the Kincardine and Mearns Area Committee today.
I pressed learning estates team leader Rachael Goldring on this imbalance and received reassurances. She said that the predictions are based on various assumptions, and because the school is not open yet council officers do not have full information. Accordingly they have used a worst case scenario.
She emphasised it was too early to say with certainty, as there is obviously no history of attendance at the school. Officers will be monitoring the situation on a fortnightly basis, and if mitigation is required, then they will progress that. This could involve taking a fresh look at the catchment areas.
The data which officers use to collate the figures comes from a variety of sources: previous trends such as placing requests, the number of existing pupils, forecast house building rates, NHS data including the number of children registered with the local GPs, population projections and birth rates.
Parental decisions made for August 2017 will allow for more accurate reporting in future years.
Currently there are 173 pupils attending Hillside School classes, with this predicted to rise to 267 in 2017, and 328 in 2018.
– Plans to demolish the now closed Cammies hotel at Cammachmore were approved on a 8-4 vote. The hotel would be replaced by six houses. It is no longer viable as a commercial concern and attempts to sell the hotel have proven fruitless. Planning permission has already been granted to convert it into seven flats, however the meeting was told this is not viable either.
Newtonhill, Muchalls and Cammachmore Community Council objected to the latest plans as the hotel is in the green belt. I agreed with the community council … and with their comment that it would however be reasonable to build on the existing building’s footprint.
However I lost the vote to Cllr Bews’ motion to support the redevelopment. A recommendation will now go to Aberdeenshire Council’s infrastructure services committee for a final decision.
Elaine Duffy from Cornerstone spoke on behalf of the residents in Angus Court expressing the concerns of residents about their fears of a loss of privacy, noise and being overlooked. Cllrs Nelson and Bews moved that the recommendation from planning officers be accepted, and this was agreed by the committee.