Jan 1st - B-Day!

The way our bin bags are collected in the Perry Barr area will change on January 1st - and we hope for the better.

If it works, there'll be no more sticking bags out on the verge, maybe less of foxes, cats, squirrels and drunks breaking them open and hopefully less litter left behind after the crews come round.

From this date crews will be instructed they must collect bags and recycling boxes from the front of residents' properties - that includes the old-fashioned bin of course.

Residents should be getting leaflets over the New Year period informing them of this - and advising them that they no longer need to put bags out on the verges.

Strictly speaking this is no change - the crews have always been required to collect from the property. But, of course, once bags started going out on the verge, those few people who insisted on their right not to put them out increasingly found themselves missed out - so everybody put out their rubbish and even official advice started telling them to.

So what's been organised is a "big bag bang" approach. Residents will keep the bags on their properties and the crews will have no excuse not to go looking for them.

We'll have to see how it goes. No doubt there will be teething problems - as there always are when anything changes.

The exercise is being applied across the Perry Barr constituency, we understand - that includes Perry Barr, Oscott, Handsworth Wood and Lozells wards. Obviously where the housing is terraced and has no front gardens, such as the Yew Tree estate, this won't be possible.