Bedford Mayor Dave Hodgson has been slammed for rushing to bring in fortnightly bin collections following a public consultation which has been branded a ‘fait accompli’.
The Mayor’s Liberal Democrat and Labour Executive agreed on the 7th September that weekly bin collections will end in a move to save £587k a year. This followed a 7 week public consultation during which concerns were raised by residents around hygiene and bin capacity.
Despite this, members of the Council’s Environment & Sustainable Communities Committee have been told that residents will not receive notification of the change until less than 3 weeks before the policy is implemented on the 31st October.
Committee member and Conservative Spokesman Cllr Graeme Coombes has hit out at the Mayor for failing to heed the concerns of residents by hastily bringing in the scheme. He said:
‘The Mayor went to great lengths before the election to claim he had saved weekly bin collections but we now know that his original proposal to end them in 2012 was put off due to a grant of over £3m from the Government.
‘This funding was supposed to provide weekly bin collections to the end of 2016/17 but the Mayor is now rushing in with fortnightly collections mid-way through the year after a public consultation that was nothing less than a ‘fait accompli’. This raises the question of whether the Council will have to pay back part of the grant to the Government for ending weekly collections early.
‘It is incredible that around 27% of households will see a change in their collection dates but they will only be made aware of this just days before the scheme begins. Residents also have concerns around hygiene, bin capacity and increased fly-tipping that are yet to be addressed.
‘Had there been a longer period between the consultation and the implementation of the scheme, much more could have been done to tell the public how it will work in practice and how they can go about recycling more of their waste to improve the Council’s lamentable recycling rate. Instead, the Mayor has pushed through the plan at breakneck speed with no regard for the consequences.’
