Big changes to your bins
Last updated at 11:23, Thursday, 26 July 2012
CONTROVERSIAL changes have been proposed to doorstep waste collections in Copeland.
The borough council launched a public consultation this week in which it details plans to:
limit garden waste collections to one brown bin per home
introduce communal roadside collection points for ‘off-route’ homes
change the criteria for families to be eligible for large bins (raising the threshold from five residents to six)
charge a one-off fee for families to have a large bin
The controversial shake-up is aimed at saving the council £120,000 on its waste service.
The saving will be made, says the council, by making a raft of changes to the way it collects rubbish to allow it to remove one bin lorry from the road and redeploy its crew.
The council stresses that the changes it has outlined are only proposals at this stage, and can be amended during the consultation.
All 33,000 households in the borough will undergo change in some form, says the council, but the vast majority will only be an alteration to collection days as refuse lorries are re-routed to increase efficiency.
However, around five per cent of households will face major changes under the Waste Collection Redesign Project.
The consultation is targeting the collections that take longer than the average of 20 seconds to complete; the 1,500 with assisted collections, the 750 with off-route collections, the 1,500 with large bins and those with multiple brown bins.
The council is consulting with those in the four affected groups plus their representatives, including Age UK, disability forums and parish councils. The process will ends on September 7, with the feedback presented to the council’s Executive on October 2. Any major changes will be phased in over the next 12 months, however minor changes, ie to collection days, will be introduced from November.
Councillor Allan Holliday, portfolio holder for environment and sustainability, said: “We are consulting on a range of proposals which are designed to help us save around £120,000 from the cost of running our household waste collection service.
“We believe that we can reduce the number of vehicles we need to provide the service, and therefore save this money, but to do this we need to increase our efficiency in a number of areas. We realise that these proposals could have an impact on our residents so we are keen to hear their views on these.”
Copeland’s refuse service is delivered by 25 full-time staff and seven vehicles. It carries out 1.7million collections a year and the direct cost of the service for a household is 48p per week.
First published at 11:10, Thursday, 26 July 2012
Published by http://www.whitehavennews.co.uk
Steve, the staff in the refuse department work in the Moresby depot (the former Smiths factory) where the bin lorries are kept. Before that they worked out of the various depots in Mirehouse, Egremont, etc., etc., where the bin lorries were kept. It seems reasonable to me that they a) work in such a location and b)should speak to someone on the phone if the customer's in the offices at Catherine Street.
While the building at Moresby is ivory coloured (I'll give you that one), it's not exactly tower shaped. Yet more ill-informed Council bashing on this site. If you're going to, quite rightly, hold them to account try and not look daft in the process please, as it gives grounds to dismiss what you say.Someone also mentioned paying Copeland £1000 or so a year in Council Tax. Copeland have no choice but to collect the full amount, but get to keep very little of it. The bulk of the money goes to the County Council, Police and Fire Service, as is clearly spelled out in the literature that accompanies your Council Tax statement every year (and which no doubt most throw straight in the bin without reading because it's from "t'Council"). Though facts like that would have dimished the effect of the whinging, wouldn't they?View all 14 comments on this article
Have your say
Perhaps if people had a real issue to complain over they would have no time for the issue of the bin collections.
They should perhaps look at what rubbish they actually throw away and there would be no need for large bins.
Also recycling - I have to do my own as I was told that the lorry could not get up our road - which I watch fortnightly driving up the road - but I still continue to recylce my own rubbish as I cannot have the items in the house for 2 weeks.
People - get a real issue to complain about!
Posted by Jackie on 28 August 2012 at 13:38