Tenby’s Deputy Mayor has invited Pembrokeshire County Council’s ‘waste improvement manager’ on a walkabout of the resort on a Monday morning before waste collections are made to see what a ‘mess’ the town looks like.

Speaking at Tuesday night’s meeting of the town council, Deputy Mayor, Clr. Mrs. Christine Brown once again highlighted issues with premises that left their trade and domestic rubbish out at all times, and quite often on top of other businesses’ waste, that didn’t appear to have ‘trade waste agreements’ in place to comply with PCC’s policy.

“Perhaps we should invite PCC’s ‘waste improvement manager’ Paul Watkins to conduct a walkabaout of Tenby on a Monday morning between 7 and 10 am to see the mess around parts of the town - it’s disgusting, and lots of it is down to trade waste,” she remarked.

A letter from staff members of the De Valence Pavilion that came before the town council stated that they have been monitoring trade refuse that is being put out in Upper Frog Street for some time, including checking the premises’ CCTV footage which has shown that some businesses even start putting their rubbish out long before they close for the evening on a Sunday and then add to it and other places during the night, leaving the area ‘looking and smelling awful’.

“We have felt that we have had to monitor the waste that is put out, as in the past it has left us in the position that we have had our fire exit blocked during events taking place which we have had to clear and remove for us to comply with our duty of care to our patrons as well as an emergency exit point for surrounding properties 24/7,” they wrote.

“Also we have found that rubbish that is put in the street by our back gates and across the road in the fire exit doorway of Savers, is not being covered and as a result people keep adding to the piles which results in the seagulls pulling the bags apart making a mess in the street from Sunday Afternoon until Monday morning.

“We appreciate that waste needs to be put out, but find that it seems a bit unfair that other businesses seem to think that it is ok to leave their uncovered bags boxes etc in front of other buildings as they do not want it looking messy outside their own.

“As ? lot of this happens outside our building it seems that we get the blame as the refuse collection often go past and leave the rubbish that is by our gates especially black bags as they seem to believe that we are not following the trade waste agreement rules!

“This then unfortunately leaves us to clean up the area first thing on a Monday morning and try to track down who the culprits are and try to limit this from carrying on,” they added.

Clr. Mrs. Brown said that she felt that there were not enough trade waste agreements in place for businesses of the town, which was apparent by noticing that some were putting out black bags instead of the blue ones, and others using orange bags when they should be using the transparent ones.

“You can tell that certain businesses are not complying with PCC’s waste policies,” she said.

“Last year we were lucky enough to have the bonus of two collections, but we’ve not got that this year, therefore it becomes a business’s issues.

“Some are putting out rubbish on an afternoon before they’ve even done a night’s trade, and you are getting trade and domestic waste mixed together,” she added.