Waste a key battleground in local elections

Frontline waste and recycling services have emerged as a key battleground in someparts of the UKahead of the local elections next week (May 3).

Candidates in Wokingham, Sheffield and Southampton have all been campaigning heavily on the issue of waste, with weekly collections coming under particular scrutiny.

In Sheffield the Labour-lead council is under fire from local Liberal Democrats, who have branded the councils decision to snub Eric Pickle’s 250 million fund for weekly waste collections and move to an alternate-weekly collection system a recipe for disaster.

Sheffield

In what proved to be a controversial move, Labour councillors announced their intention to change from a weekly to a fortnightly collection scheme for residual waste in January 2012. The decision attracted criticism from Deputy Prime Minister, Sheffield MP Nick Clegg.

In its defence the Labour-lead council argued that the change was necessary in order to save 2.44 million from its budget each year.

The council also resisted calls to apply for funding from Mr Pickles 250 million fund, saying that funding would not be enough to plug the gap in its budget (see letsrecycle.com story).

In its manifesto, the Sheffield Liberal Democrat party, led by councillor Shaffaq Mohammed, pledged to reverse the Labour councils plans to scrap weekly waste collections in the city.

It said: Having your waste collected is the most basic service you expect in return for your council tax. Regardless of who you are everyone has a bin. However, Labour councillors plan to end your weekly bin collection, despite a government fund to keep that exact service.

“Alongside this proposal, Labour plan to slash recycling services. This would make Sheffield the first city to move to fortnightly collections, while reducing instead of increasing recycling – a sure recipe for disaster.”

Southampton

The 250 million weekly waste fund is also a key election issue in Southampton, where Labour Party candidates have pledged to carry out a full review of the councils waste collection service with the central aim of raising recycling rates.

A statement released by Labours Southampton and Romsey branch revealed that if elected, the party would seek to keep weekly waste collections instead of moving to an alternate-weekly collection system, and would even apply to Communities Secretary Eric Pickles collection fund in order to do so.

The party has also promised voters that it will look into introducing kerbside glass recycling if they gain a majority over the Conservative party which is currently in control of the city council.

The party’s statement said: Labour wants to keep weekly bin collections. For example in our determination to maintain weekly bin collections we will submit an application for money to keep weekly bin collections from Eric Pickles.

The Tories are dragging their feet and have yet to submit the application for money to sustain weekly bin collections. Our review is focussed on improving recycling across the city.

However, Conservative councillors hit back at Labours claims saying that the party has u-turned on its previous support for an alternate weekly system and said it had already submitted a bid to the 250 million fund for money to keep weekly collections and to introduce kerbside glass collections.

Wokingham

In Wokingham, Berkshire, the Liberal Democrat candidates standing for election have branded the Conservative councils changes to the towns waste collection service as disastrous.

Under changes which came into effect in Wokingham on April 2, the council has limited households to 80 75-litre sacks each per year in which to put their residual waste. The sacks are collected weekly alongside a separate collection of dry recyclables.

Since the launch of the new service, some residents have complained that they have received wrongly sized sacks and were unsure what could and could not be recycled.

Prue Bray, leader of the Wokingham Liberal Democrats, attacked the Conservative executive member for environment Gary Cowan for the catastrophic failure of the new scheme and said her party would have consulted residents more closely on the changes.

She said: Gary Cowan is responsible for the council’s waste service and has presided over a catastrophic failure. The new waste scheme is not well thought out and on top of that its introduction has been one disaster after another. It descended into farce when Gary Cowan asked in a radio interview about the variety of wrong size bags that have been supplied, didn’t even have the most basic information- the correct size of the bags.

The Liberal Democrats are committed to reducing waste and increasing recycling but we have had serious concerns about these proposed changes ever since the Conservatives first announced them. The Lib Dems raised a whole raft of problems both publicly and behind the scenes and each time the Conservatives ignored us and continued to steam roller through their ill thought out scheme.

Despite the criticism, the council has defended the new recycling system, claiming that it is likely to encourage recycling rates to go up by 10% from the recorded level of 41% in 2010/11.

Next weeks council elections will see seats contested in a total of English 128 local authorities, all 32 Scottish local authorities and 21 of the 22 Welsh councils, alongside three mayoral elections including the London mayoralty and the London Assembly