Increasing waste fees is a rubbish idea, insistTories
AN increase to bulky waste collection fees in Birmingham ‘punishes’ people ‘doing the right thing’ while illegal fly-tipping increases, it has been claimed.
The Labour-run city council decided on Tuesday to hike the price from £25 to £35 (£33 if booked online) – but said they will now take away ten items instead of six.
But opposition groups have heavily criticised the move as well as the fact garden waste collections have gone up by £10 to £50.
The Conservatives claimed Birmingham could receive an extra £45.5 million in ‘spending power’ from the government next year, according to provisional figures, and questioned the need for higher charges.
Cllr Deirdre Alden (Con, Edgbaston), shadow member for street scene and parks, also pointed to the costly two industrial disputes with bin workers, the most recent of which cost the council around £6 million.
She said the increases would hit ‘hard-working people in the pocket’, adding: “What makes this worse is that both these charges are entirely counter-productive, as honest and decent people are punished for doing the right thing, whilst fly-tipping increases and recycling decreases, which just ends up just costing the council even more.
“The reintroduction of free bulky waste and green waste collections would be cheaper and greener for the council in the long run, which is why the Conservatives have consistently argued for this.
“Sadly this short-sighted Birmingham Labour-run council has again shown themselves incapable of thinking of anything beyond the desire to tax residents more.”
Bulky waste collections used to be free in Birmingham until a charge was introduced in 2014. Critics have regularly linked that move to a growing fly-tipping problem in the city, with incidents increasing from 12,348 in 2015/16 to 15,993 in 2017/18, according to government figures.
Cllr John O’Shea (Lab, Acocks Green), street scene and parks chief, recently told a scrutiny committee the issue was now trending downwards slightly.
The council confirmed its intention to increase garden waste and bulky waste fees last year during the 2019/20 budget consultation proposals, stating it would generate around £840,000 in additional income for the year.
Meanwhile, some Birmingham residents could be told to put their bins out on different days in a bid by the city council to improve its failing rubbish collection service.
Darren Share, assistant director for street scene, admitted there remained problems with the collection rounds following the shake-up from a four to five-day working model last September – a move agreed with unions as part of the resolution to the 2017 bin strike.
Recent figures showed that the council’s collection rate between April and July was 99.58 per cent against a target of 99.90 per cent.
However, that still meant 48,448 collections were missed out of a scheduled 11,575,194.