Junkbusters has just finished for this year , following a one day pick-up in March, and our longer campaign for June and July.

We had wonderful volunteers who helped out with our doorstep collections, and collected all sorts of donations, including a cross trainer machine, lots of kitchen items, two ornamental garden pots and to top it all – a unicycle.

So thanks to all who volunteered, and those who made donations, they will be passed to the British Heart Foundation and go towards making a massive difference to a lot of lives.

The scheme will return in the new year – keep a look out on our Twitter feed for details: @junkbusters1 

The following news article covers a successful prosecution of a landlord who failed to obtain a HMO license.

If you house has five or more people living in it, over three or more floors and sharing facilities – it needs to have a valid license.

Contact us and we will be happy to check if your property needs one

http://birminghamnewsroom.com/birmingham-landlord-ordered-to-pay-nearly-4000/

A Birmingham man responsible for a large volume of flytipping in Selly Oak, which included building rubble, doors and cement asbestos, has today (28 April) been ordered to pay nearly £4,000.

Mazafar Ali, 42, of Stechford Road, Birmingham, admitted nine offences under the Environmental Protection Act 1990, following a successful prosecution brought by Birmingham City Council’s Environmental Health department.

He was fined £2,400 for the first offence, with no separate penalty for the remaining eight, and ordered to pay £1,517 court costs.

During summer 2014, the council’s Waste Enforcement Unit was investigating issues arising from a large amount of building works taking place in the Bournbrook area of Selly Oak – particularly the escape of waste resulting from building works.

Between 10 June and 17 November 2014, officers saw builders’ materials and waste dumped outside five properties in Dawlish Road, Hubert Road, George Road, and Tiverton Road on a number of occasions.

A mixture of building materials and industrial waste such as bricks and sandbags along with doors, hosepipes, and carpet were all dumped outside the five addresses, which Ali confirmed to officers that he was working on.

Mark Croxford, Birmingham City Council’s Head of Environmental Health, said: “This case shows we will make every effort to bring to justice anyone that has a blatant disregard for Birmingham’s environment. The defendant made no attempt to control his builders’ waste and allowed it to spill out over the highway – this is not only unacceptable but also illegal.

“Cleaner streets are a top priority for everyone in this city, so it is important we do all we can to ensure this. The clear message we are sending out is we will not hesitate to take enforcement action when appropriate.

“None of our neighbourhoods should have to suffer the misery associated with flytipping. As a council, we are showing we will play our part in keeping communities cleaner and greener.”

We maintain a number of sites across Bournbrook where we manage the spaces to bring something green and wonderful to the community.

You may have noticed the four big concrete planter boxes based along Dartmouth Road. These were rejuvenated last year, with help from the wonderful students of Tiverton Academy, who joined Community Wardens in planting lots of wild native seed.

The purpose of this was following a drive by Kew Gardens, London, through a project called ‘Grow Wild’ , to raise awareness of the decline in native wild flowers. They not only tell people about this risk to our wild flowers, but supply funding too. The Community Warden project was lucky in not only having some seed supplied, but funding too which helped us to buy extra tools and extend the project this year, more in a moment.

So the boxed in Dartmouth were planted with a variety of wild flowers including: Corn Chamomile, Ladies Bedstraw, Cornflowers and lots of others.

They are still in the early stages of being established, but are progressing along nicely. The scheme maintains them on occasion, mainly in ensuring that litter is taken away (yes – some people actually throw litter in these spaces)  and certain plants (also known as weeds) don’t become too evasive. But for the most part we don’t aim to interfere too much so as to allow the plots to develop as normal wild meadow or piece of ground may if left to its own devices.

As a follow-up to this, we have extended the project this year by appealing to local student residents who have abandoned back gardens to get in touch with us. We will visit with wild seed (sourced from a wild flower farm) and help to advise where to grow  and help with initial planting.

If you would like to know more – contact us.

As an add on to this we also care for a plot in Dawlish Road, near to Exeter Road. This has sadly been dumped on a little by some builders, but contains lots of plants, including a Laburnum tree, daffodils and various other trees and shrubs. Its a bit of mini-woodland in the making.

We aim to work on this during the summer to undertake a little bit of pruning and re-planting.

So watch this space

We would really welcome your views about the community you live in and invite you to take our short survey

As a little thank you we will enter you into a draw to win £200 worth of shopping vouchers of your choice!

 www.surveymonkey.co.uk/r/birmingham_community_survey

 The survey closes on 11^th May.

The new Electoral Register is published on 1 December – but you won’t be on it and able to vote in any elections and referendums held next year if you haven’t responded to letters sent to you over the past couple of months by the Elections Office. Individual Electoral Registration – recently introduced to tackle voting fraud – means that everyone is now responsible for registering themselves. It’s having a major impact on the number of people on the register. Those most at risk of falling off the register are people whose circumstances have recently changed – for example those able to register now they’ve turned 16 or 17 years, those who have recently moved into a new area, home, household or care home, or students starting university. If you are a Student, you can register at both your term time and home addresses and you can vote in both Local Elections. You risk a poor credit rating for things like mobile phones, loans and mortgages as credit companies use the register for checks. You will need your National Insurance number in order to register.

To find out more go to http://www.birmingham.gov.uk/register-to-vote

To get hold of your National Insurance number go to http://www.gov.uk/lost-national-insurance-number’