Each guesthouse takes the stretch in front of it, the council takes the public beach and the harbour side, and the school does one Saturday a term.
The rota for the three months ahead is on the board outside the office and it is the same arrangement as last year, which worked.
How it divides. Each guesthouse cleans the stretch of beach in front of its own property, daily, before eight in the morning. The council cleans the public beach, the visitor beach, the harbour side and the jetty path, also before eight. The school takes one Saturday morning a term and does the north end, which the children choose themselves and which is usually the stretch behind the sports ground.
What goes where. Beach waste is not household waste. Bag it and leave it at the collection point at the end of your own path and the round will take it, because dragging bags along a beach to the council yard is how bags get left. Anything that has come in off the sea and is heavy, a net, a plank, a drum, should be reported rather than moved, and the tractor will collect it.
What we are asking for beyond the sweeping. Two things. Straws and plastic cups are the bulk of what is picked up in front of the guesthouses, and four properties have stopped putting them out at all, which halved their own sweeping. And nobody should be burning beach waste, ever, however wet and difficult it is to bag: the smoke goes straight through the houses behind the beach and the council will treat it as a complaint.
One change from last year. The Friday morning clean on the public beach has moved to before seven rather than eight, because the beach is busy with island families from about half past seven on a Friday and a tractor on it then is wrong.
The rota has held for two years now with almost no chasing, and it is worth saying plainly that the guesthouses do their stretches without being asked. The one complaint the office received last season was from an operator about another operator, and the two of them settled it between themselves before the council got to it.
