Rubbishing the Local Council

Times of TW

Rubbishing the Local Council

By Kent Barker

Let me say it before your do, this column is rubbish.

Here’s the question.  What do you consider to be the prime service provided by your local council?  If you answered refuse collection you wouldn’t be alone.  A borough council does, of course, oversee far more services including planning, housing, benefits, and even parking. (Roads and education are handled at County rather than Borough level.)

But let’s stick with rubbish.  As good responsible citizens I am sure you want as much of your refuse recycled.  Tipping it into landfill sites creates methane which is a key greenhouse gas.  And, anyway, the government has to meet stringent European reduction targets.  Which is good.  But the problem is that, just as local councils are trying to cope with providing greater recycling facilities, Westminster is slashing their budgets.

So let me take you to our recent Parish Council meeting where a Borough Councillor – the Portfolio Holder for Sustainability (!!) had come to speak to us, along with the TWBC Head of Environment and Street Scene (who on earth dreams up these daft titles?)  Anyway, the former is an elected councillor and the latter a paid council officer, but both were with us to explain or defend council decisions.

Let’s take the bottle issue first.  The council doesn’t do kerbside collections for glass.  So if you want to recycle your bottles you have to take them to a bottle bank.  As luck would have it Benenden has a bottle bank in the village hall car park. But this is extremely unpopular with nearby residents who object volubly to the sound of breaking glass smashing the quiet enjoyment of their garden.  Plus we’re on the border of Ashford Borough which has recently introduced domestic glass collections and removed its bottle banks.  And that means that people with lots of bottles to dispose of now drive to our village to deposit them in our bank.  Which means it’s often full to overflowing.

Are TWBC going to help by offering to collect our glass from our homes?  No, said the Head of Street Scene, they are not.  The trouble is, five years ago,  they locked themselves into a ten year contract with a waste facility that does not include glass.  Will they consider amending or renegotiating the contract?  No, they won’t.  Plus it’s too expensive to change the vehicles they use to collect the bottle-bank bins.  So, deadlock. The current situation, in our village at least, is unacceptable but the council cannot or will not consider changing it.

So lets move on to the Civic Amenity Vehicle (rubbish lorry to you or me). This is the responsibility of the Portfolio Holder for Sustainability. Fifteen or twenty years ago TWBC closed a local dump (and sold off the land). In return they promised to provide a weekly lorry for bulky items that would not go into the domestic bin.  And very popular it is too.  But now they have cut the service by half and are threatening to halve it yet again - unless the Parish Council pays an additional levy.  Which, as we have pointed out, amounts to double taxation.  Householders already pay for the refuse service through their council tax, now they are being expected to pay a second time through their village precept which will have to rise to meet the obligation.

Frankly we’re furious.  As I, and others, made extremely clear at the Parish Council Meeting.  The Portfolio Holder for Sustainability seemed a nice enough bloke and he seemed surprised and not a little taken aback by the strength of feeling.  It’s all the fault of central government he told us.  We have to make savings.  We’re all in it together.

No, we’re not, we replied.  We are at the extreme periphery of the borough and no one seems to give a fig about our needs.  In Tunbridge Wells you only have to drive a short distance to the North Farm Waste Recycling Centre.  For us it’s a 40 mile round trip. If residents of the town need extra collections, they get them. There are eight council run bottle banks in the town and others at supermarkets.

Then there is the question of fly-tipping. Even now, with the bi-weekly village refuse lorry service, some unsociable people dump their rubbish on the side of the road or in the woods. Which the council has to clear up at considerable cost.  We fear this will simply increase if the refuse lorry is further reduced.

So will the council reconsider double charging for our lorry?  No they won’t.  Government cuts and all that. The current situation is unacceptable but the council won’t consider changing it.

The councillor got rather upset when I suggested that our only option may be to vote him out at the next election!