Last week, the Vange Hill Community Group got a double page spread in the Yellow Advertiser and top billing on the Yellow Advertiser Basildon Today website in a feature about their frustration with the rubbish collection and flytipping situation on the ¾ estate: EXCLUSIVE: Exasperated residents in one of Basildon’s worst fly-tipping hotspots explain how and why they took matters into their own hands.

Last Friday, a day after the Yellow Advertiser published this feature, it was rubbish collection day on the estate. Given the extensive coverage about the frustrations of the Vange Hill Community Group, you would have thought that the refuse collection team would have been briefed to make a bit of an effort when going round the estate to leave it looking tidy. Not a bit of it. As you can see from the above three images, it’s the same old story of uncollected rubbish bags left to fester and get torn apart by the local foxes. Seriously, you couldn’t make this scenario up… Basildon Council – you have well and truly shot yourself in the foot with this one!

This is a basic service that people are paying for. It’s a basic service that for a number of unfathomable reasons, Basildon Council just can’t get right. It’s a basic service that the relevant officers from the council should be sitting round the table with the Vange Hill Community Group to work out what’s going wrong, and to thrash out a plan that will resolve the situation once and for all. Hopefully, that meeting will happen sooner rather than later and it will be onwards and upwards from this point…