Clinical waste left on Northampton street for weeks

Ironically situated almost underneath the noses of CIWM headquarters, it is reported that clinical waste has been left on Northampton street for weeks.

“The family of a 97-year-old  woman have had to leave clinical waste outside their Northampton house for several weeks after regular collection were missed.

Jessica Farquharson, of Gloucester Crescent, Delapre, has cancer and dementia and, in the course of caring for her, her family need to dispose of soiled items and needles safely.

Enterprise, the private firm that also collects rubbish and recycling for Northampton Borough Council, is supposed to take away the special yellow waste bags once a week.

But it missed three collections in a row, leading to the  bags piling up outside.”

http://www.northamptonchron.co.uk/news/health/clinical-waste-left-on-northampton-street-for-weeks-1-4820005

 

Strangely, this service from Enterprise does not surprise me. As a resident of Ealing, their performance over the last 12 months of so, since they won contracts with LBE have been nothing short of farcical. Just as bad is the approach by LBE in not applying penalties or cancelling the contract in favour of a company better able to deliver, and inevitably of walking blindly into a contract that has few penalties and many ties but no promise of adequate performance.However, and leaving aside the personal bugbear of Enterprise activities in the London Borough of Ealing – I’m thinking of buying a single share and turning up at a shareholder’s meeting – the poor performance in clinical waste collections, by in-house and by [any] contracted-out services is all too common.

And where are the regulators? There are a defined set of performance standards for local authorities and their contractors, and though isolated incidents should not be taken out of context the evidence is of widespread and repeated failures about which so many do so little.

Patients and their carers are left to struggle. Poor planning and ineffective communication between hospitals, GPs and the PCT, the Local Authority and contractors leave the patient in the lurch. Too often, impossible constraints are placed on patients to present their wastes at silly times of the night to facilitate early morning collections.

And those regulators? Who might be concerned about wastes, clinical, sanitary or otherwise, being left uncollected on the streets for so long? Had it been the householder at fault, Local Authority enforcement officers would be using a plethora of legislation to impose fines, send threatening letters and initiate court action. But now the tables are turned they are nowhere to be seen. Is that equitable?

That shareholder’s meeting will be great fun.

Readers may be interested in the two nationwide surveys undertaken by Blenkharn Environmental and made available through the Clinical Waste Discussion Forum, cataloguing the on-going poor performance standards in domestic clinical waste management across the UK:

Clinical wastes in the community: Local Authority management of clinical wastes from domestic premises

Clinical hazards?

 

 

 

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