There has been a lot of chatter, rumour and queries about upcoming changes to bins and parking, so here’s a quick summary of what we know and what we don’t. No doubt it will be a hot topic for our upcoming AGM, at 7.30pm on 4th November at Queens Park Church Hall.

We are aware the council is planning a public consultation on changes to parking and bin collection. It was due in August, but is yet to materialise.

Two Society reps got a sneak preview of the plans at a site visit with council planners, so have some idea what is planned. There are three main issues

  1. How to implement the pavement parking ban
  2. How to introduce a residents’ parking permit scheme
  3. How to resolve problems with refuse collection

Proposed solutions include introducing parking permits for residents, reducing parking to marked bays on one side of the street only, and introducing centralised on street bin collection ponts. Clearly such moves will be controversial. The issues are summarised in the Autumn newsletter, coming to you shortly and available on line now.

Meanwhile binmen have been spreading rumours about bins being removed and replaced with street bin hubs. This will certainly be part of the consultation, but nothing has been agreed. It will likely affect only the lanes between Nithsdale Road and Queen Square initially, as the council believe the lanes are unsafe to work in (a bin worker suffered a significant injury there recently) and trials of alternatives methods have not been ideal either. The council are aware there will still be a need to collect garden refuse bins for those who pay for them as street hubs don’t handle garden waste either. It’s not an easy problem to fix. We await the consultation.

Regarding the purple glass bins, we have been told in the past the collections have been missed repeatedly because the private contractor has been refusing to collect them due to the state of the back lanes. To confuse things further, all the purple glass bins were rounded up to the ends of the lanes and emptied on Wednesday (15th Oct). The bin workers told more than one resident that they were being removed permanently and replaced by on-street bin hubs, so not to bother retrieving them, but there has been no such official announcement. Furthermore on-street hubs do not collect glass, and this appears to be just unhelpful misinformation.

Sadly we just don’t know what’s going on, and we should probably go and retrieve our bins. But if you fancy recycling your own glass in the meantime, nearest glass bins are at Kildrostan Street, and Nithsdale Road at Pollokshaws Road.

Some may recall the survey we conducted around these issues back in July, for which we received 200 responses. We will get the results published on the blog shortly, probably in advance of the AGM.

As we learn more, we will put it up here.

UPDATE 21 Oct: We have had confirmation from the council that there will be “at least one further glass bin service” and nothing will change without prior information to residents. I interpret that to mean it’s under review like the other aspects of bin collection, but until then it’s service as normal. So if your purple bin is still in the lane or street, could you please collect it and take it home.