As a local authority officer I was startled to read the comments yesterday
from the Community Recycling Network and even more shocked when I saw that they had complained over the coverage by letsrecycle.com
In particular, the quote from the CRN seemed to imply that low
performing councils would not be able to spend the money wisely or
effectively. Coming from a person who is actually sitting on the judging
panel for the allocation of the fund, this is an astonishing admission and
does little for the public image of the judging process. Perhaps it would be appropriate for CRN to seriously reconsider its role on the judging panel – DEFRA should certainly be asking some tough questions.
Perhaps the CRN should realise that you cannot run with the hare and hunt
with the hounds. If you seek a position of influence and power, it should be
used responsibly. This type of outburst does little for the image of the
CRN among local authorities. Even more astonishing was the fact that the
original press release came from the CRN, and all your website did was to
seek some robust responses from it. To complain that the story was not
presented in the way that CRN wanted was both naive and arrogant.
For the record, we are not a low performing authority and have not put a bid into the second round of funding, so have no particular axe to grind on this subject.
Kate Woodhouse
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