Comments on: Weekly bin collections sent to landfill

By: Steve Collins

Steve Collins — Sun, 19 Jun 2011 14:32:00 +0000

So you think that you should simply be charged a level of council tax commensurate with the precise services that you use each year? Any idea how much this approach would cost to implement if we all decided to do this? Billions and billions.

Your approach is selfish and your lazy, sweeping generalisations about council employees are untrue. If you genuinely think that a monkey could run a council, why don’t you give it a go?!

By: Deanoman

Deanoman — Sat, 18 Jun 2011 12:41:00 +0000

This weekly collection thing is a non issue. In Mole valley we have 1 black rubbish bin, 2 recycling bins and a food waste bin. As we are fanatical recyclers the black rubbish bin is only ever half full, the two recycling bins last us for two weeks and the food waste bin is emptied weekly. The system is fine as it is we don’t need a change.

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 19:24:00 +0000

Try dropping the price a bit. By refusing to drop the price, you are effectively depriving a young family of a home.

By: Lauren23700

Lauren23700 — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:36:00 +0000

Good points. If we have less collections we can have less council workers and a lower council tax. I’ll vote for that.

By: Carol

Carol — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:28:00 +0000

I can cope with my council tax although it has doubled in the past ten years what is really getting me down now: When my husband died I moved to Kent to be near my son and have been trying to sell my house in Cambridgeshire since. I was horrified to find that after six months I now have to pay full council tax on an empty property that, despite pricing as reasonably as I can, I cannot sell in this market. I am retired and can’t even get a single persons discount, I would not mind paying say 50%, well I would, but I accept that there are other things besides my servcices but I think it is unfair that I am forced to pay full tax. Is this true everywhere?

By: Anonymous

Anonymous — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 18:03:00 +0000

I do not understand your obsession with Council Tax.

I hope you realise that

a) Refuse collection costs on average about £100 per household per year, or £3 billion for the whole country.

b) Putting all the overspend and corruption to one side “Local services” are in fact about eighty per cent of what the government does (I’d consider Foreign Office, Defence and Immigration Control to be non-local i.e. national, and that’s about it).

c) Council tax is only 5% of all government revenues and between a sixth and a third of very narrowly defined local government cash spending, call it a quarter for sake of argument.

d) Applying maths to b) and c), Council Tax only pays for one-sixteenth of the cost of local services and only a quarter of what a local council spends. Council Tax is FANTASTIC VALUE!!

Why don’t you try taking a pop at the Really Bad Taxes like VAT or Employer’s National Insurance, which not only raise ten times as much as Council Tax but cause unemployment, higher prices, lower profits etc etc?

By: Tora

Tora — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 16:12:00 +0000

I pay £1800 a year council tax, have no local ameneties (shops) within a mile, have no footpaths or street lighting within 200yds of my house, have no kids, draw no benefits, and have my foodwaste collected every two weeks. The councils have now been shamed in the press for squandering bilions through not implimenting simple price comparisons for items such as mobile phones, and tendered services. The so called “chief executives” of these councils say they are on a par with those in private induustries and therefore deserve the same sort of salaries, but the same incompetant management running our councils would have a private firm bust in weeks – these jumped up council appointees should be paid what they are worth -next to nothing as a monkey could run the council on this style of totalitarian gravy train.

By: Blarg1987

Blarg1987 — Thu, 16 Jun 2011 16:01:00 +0000

I think you would find it would cost a lot more having to employ people and pay them a reasonable wage to sift throuhg all the rubbish and process it accordingly, as well as the additional costs in setting up a plant to do that, ensuring correct standards etc.
Councils go for the cheapest option when tendering contracts so if the choice is between having residents sort their rubbish, or paying people to sort the rubbish for them which would you think the local counciller who is probabaly elected saying they will save money will go for?

By: Andy Richards

Andy Richards — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 14:41:00 +0000

Oh Dear! Will no-one come to the rescue of the TPA’s hobbyhorse of the month?!

What possible business of Pickles and the Government was the frequency of councils’ bin collections in the first place. Talk about micro-managment. Localism, anybody?

Expect all mention of bins to have quietly disappeared from this site within a couple of weeks……

By: Alexander Anichkin

Alexander Anichkin — Wed, 15 Jun 2011 08:48:00 +0000

Has anyone looked at the cost of the service LOST? If it costs £100mln to restore the weekly collection, does it not also mean that taxpayers have lost £100mln worth of council service. How can they be reimbursed for that loss? And how people are compensated for hours spent sorting, packing, washing and rinsing (plus the cost of water and heat)? They pay huge sums for council services, why are they made to do additional work for having those services?
I think the approach to collections and recycling is wrong, and that is what makes it so costly. Why, for example, assign numerous bins and bags to each household? Most people travel to their local communal centres each week. Shouldn’t it be enough to have recycling banks with instructions next to supermarkets, public parking lots in towns and villages?