According to the council's Liberal Democrat opposition, the local authority only chose to adopt the waste indicators in its Local Area Agreement from April 2008, when other councils opted for just one or two, because it was about to finalise a major PFI contract with Veolia, meaning it “could not fail” to improve its performance.
However, a councillor from West Berkshire's controlling Conservative Party dismissed the claims as “silly”.
And, a council spokesman said that the indicators merely reflected government advice and showed the importance the local authority attached to the environment and its commitment to improving its 23% recycling rate.
He told letsrecycle.com: “These targets were dictated to us by the government, so we had no choice as to what they were. The government insisted on these because of our recycling and landfill rates at the time, and a need to see these improved.”
Liberal
According to councillor Owen Jeffery, West Berkshire's Liberal Democrat councillor for Thatcham South And Crookham, the council was “playing politics” when it chose all three waste and recycling indicators to work towards from April (see letsrecycle.com story).
The indicators mean that the council will be measured in terms of how much municipal waste it sends to landfill, how much household waste it sends for reuse, recycling or composting and its levels of residual waste per household.
Cllr Jeffery claimed that the reason the council made reducing waste and increasing recycling a priority was merely because it had agreed a 25-year, £500 million PFI contract with Veolia – with the expectation of more than doubling its recycling rate to 49% in the long-term.
In the past six weeks, recycling participation has already shot up with the introduction of a new kerbside recycling service, provided by Veolia.
He said: “The Conservatives have chosen waste ones because they knew that they were going to get the PFI contract and it would be almost impossible to not meet the targets.”
“I am happy to be quoted as saying that they have picked three targets they could not fail to deliver,” he added.
Collections
Cllr Jeffrey also attacked the council over how it had handled the roll-out of its new recycling collection service, in which residents are given two new green boxes – one for paper and card and the other for glass – and a new green sack for plastic bottles and cans.
The local media has reported that since the new approach was adopted, up to 100 homes-a-day have suffered from incomplete collections because of unexpectedly high volumes of waste and recyclables being left out for collection.
Cllr Jeffrey said the problems were due to a lack of communication and accused the Conservatives of “failing to plan for success.”
West Berkshire
Responding to these claims, the council spokesman stressed that it was just six weeks into operation of its new recycling regime.
He added that they had laid on extra collection services to cope with the high volume of waste and recyclables and did not anticipate further problems.
He said: “In fact, the very high level of participation seen reflects the successful communications campaign to residents and to some extent the new service has been a victim of this success.” The rate is now suspected as being as high as 90%.
Conservative councillor Geoff Findlay added that it was “unprecedented” for a set rate prediction to double and claimed the opposition were “milking the issue”.
On the issue of waste indicators, he refuted the Liberal Democrat claims, saying it was “silly” to suggest that the council chose the waste indicators because they knew they would be able to meet the targets.
He said: “It shows the importance we attach to our cleaner greener policy. 70% of our area is an outstanding area of natural beauty. We want to preserve and improve the area and to fully embrace greener policies. It's not surprising we chose these. They [Lib Dems] would have done the same thing if they were in power.”
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