DERRY’S council has said it will not send its staff into remove materials from bonfire sites across the city until agreement has been reached with the ‘key players’ in the events.
The move was revealed at a recent meeting of Derry City and Strabane District Council’s Health and Community committee, where councillors agreed to set up a ‘Member-led Bonfire Working Group’ in line with Council’s Bonfire Policy.
A number of these bonfires are located on council lands.
The meeting was told that council officers had participated previously in a cross departmental bonfire working group in relation to the Fountain and Meenan Square Bonfires.
This group included representatives from the local community and the council, the PSNI, the NI Fire and Rescue Service, Council, Housing Executive, APEX Housing, Public Health Agency (PHA), City Centre Initiative, Transport NI, NI Environment Agency (NIEA) and the Department for Communities (DfC).
However, the meeting was told that council currently there is no multi-agency group to take a strategic overview on the impact of bonfires across the local council area.
The meeting was also told that the council had secured £156,805 from the Peace IV to implement its new Bonfire Policy, part of which entailed the recruitment of a Community Engagement Officer, who would be tasked with implementing the council’s action plan on regulating bonfires on council land.
In August of last year, the Derry News revealed that council had appointed the officer.
As part of the new policy, council will set up an internal review group to review actions to be taken following complaints and reports to council in relation to bonfires.
Any complaint to Council will be directed to the Community Engagement Officer and a meeting of the review group will be called within two hours of a report to council on an ‘immediate bonfire issue’.
However, it was also agreed that any removal of materials from bonfire sites will go ahead on the ‘basis of pre-agreement with the key players’.
In addition, the policy sets out that community representatives, councillors and local residents should be in attendance during these operations.
A report brought before Thursday’s meeting stated: “Council teams will not go into remove materials without these arrangements.”
It added: “Council’s waste teams will go in and remove/clean up bonfire sites once it’s considered safe to do so both in terms of fire risk and the safety of crews.
“This will typically be within 48 hours after the event. This period may however be extended particularly where tyres have been burned as these can burn for up to several days.”
Speaking at the meeting, the SDLP’s Brian Tierney said that he had concerns over the lack of representation from young people in the group, which he said ‘was vitally important’.
Commenting, Sinn Fein’s Kevin Campbell said that part of council’s action plan was to engage with young people involved in the bonfires, adding ‘instead of bringing them into this environment it was us going out to them’.
Cllr Tierney asked for a further report to be brought back on the issue he raised which will be presented at a future meeting of the same committee.
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