Working Together

Councillor Phil Bateman "I am pleased that in Wednesfield North that the Labour Party has been campaigning on this issue for more than 12 months with great success. First in ensuring that garage sites were cleaned up, dumped cars beds, old mattresses and other nasty items, all removed.

Second the issue of litter that is dropped on our streets and across our green areas. I have praised local schools for joining with us in trying to educate children about this nuisance and of course graffiti. We have had great success from this approach. But it is very much an ongoing one.

I would like to emphasise at this point that the leadership at Coppice High School has shown nothing but support for the community when I have been around. I would be surprised that there was any consideration at all being given in the school to suggestion that in some way, the very school that gains its support and its future from the community it serves, could be suggesting that dumped litter within the school grounds was because of some kind of weird 'community revenge'? [Wolverhampton Chronicle July 8th 2004]

I am certain that any rubbish including old mattresses if they have been dumped in the school grounds were dumped because it was convenient for the dumper to do so.I suspect that this is because of the pressure that is being put on garage sites by the Authority, neighbours and the police who are all watching to catch people who have in the past been dumping their unwanted goods on these sites.

Dumping rubbish garbage and other litter is a battle that as a community we are all involved with and I am sure that the headteacher will as always work with the community to try and reduce the problem for the whole community including the school. In short I do not buy into the 'revenge' theory. The community is not likely to be involved in pre-meditated acts of law breaking in the manner described in the article. I do hope that we can however with the support of the City Council catch the offenders that have taken their chance and just dumped their unwanted goods onto the school site and prosecute them for fly-tipping and dumping."

This is a response to the article that was published in the Wolverhampton Chronicle today.