Shropshire Council has yet again extended the deadline to sign up for bin collection this year. You can now sign up until the end of April. Beware that for £56 you only get collection until the end of October. Then you pay for a full year again.
This is another fine mess the Conservatives have got us into (and it is not as funny as Laurel and Hardy).
Just 56% of households with a green bin have joined the service. That is in line with the consultation outcome of 55% (there were 18,000 responses). But the Conservatives ignored that and went ahead expecting 70% take up. Now, the council is £1.26 million short of predicted income. That why it is pushing hard for more households to sign up.
The scheme was rushed into operation. The initial stickers that identified households that had signed up peeled off. The start of the scheme had to be delayed by a couple of months and the council has knowingly made it difficult to pay. MiPermit, which is designed for car parking, was chosen as the only way of payment for speed, not suitably. Households can only buy a permit for collection that runs from November to October, no matter how late in the year they join the scheme.
Other councils that charge for garden waste use direct debit.
I would like a review of this difficult scheme after the election. Could payment be moved to direct debit and single payments? Could a permanent barcode on bins be checked with a hand scanner at the time of collection. These moves would allow payment for 12 months starting at any date and options such as quarterly payments.
What is unlikely is that any party in control of the council will abandon green waste charges. Many people think they are unfair given that they already pay council tax. I agree. But the council finances are a mess due to years of mismanagement by Conservative council leaders. Removing green waste charges is unlikely to be an affordable option. I wish it was otherwise.
We need to get the Conservative rabble out of SC as soon as possible.
They have really no idea of how to run the ” business”.
Not their money….its ours !!!!!!
We need to get them out and as Andy suggests , decentralise and give back more power amd finance to local diratricts.
Those that remember SSDC …..it worked well.
The only way to deal with incompetence is to make those responsible accountable for it. The council are profligate with our money and feel that they can come to ratepayers and just charge us for their gross negligence.
This will be another example. In this instance they not only paid for a consultation but decided to ignore the results. Why, then, hold one in the first place. So ratepayers have paid for an ignored consultation and are now lumbered with the consequent £1.26 million shortfall. Those councillors who voted for the consultation and then voted to ignore it should have to pay for it and the shortfall. Perhaps this would make them think twice.
If this had been the case with the scandalous purchase of the shopping centres, would that have gone ahead?