While the efforts of the Communities and Local Government Secretary Eric Pickles to defend and revive weekly bin collections have been widely reported less the Government have also abolished state powers for town hall bin inspectors to enter homes and gardens to inspect bins. Powers originally intended to tackle large-scale fly-tippers were twisted under Labour to allow town halls to spy on local residents.
As a House of Commons Library note explains:
Section 180 of the Environment Act 1995 grants the Environment Agency and local authorities (and a number of other authorities) with specific powers to investigate offences under specific environmental legislation. This includes powers to investigate illegally deposited waste and ways in which household waste is disposed of.
The Daily Mail reports that under a Community Protection Notice there will be £100 on-the-spot fines introduced for those who use their gardens as rubbsh dumps for items such as old sofas or fridges.
The report says:
The powers will apply to privately owned homes as well as council houses. Officials will target only those guilty of ‘persistent, unreasonable behaviour’.
They will be given a warning and told to clear the rubbish away. If they ignore the notice, they will then be guilty of a crime.
Officials do not want to target law-abiding householders who are forced to have rubbish in their gardens at certain times of the week because of the complicated recycling policies introduced by many councils.
And the law will be worded to protect homeowners from over-zealous council officials patrolling the streets looking to make money by issuing on-the-spot fines.
While many councils are looking at switching from fortnightly to weekly bin collections - helped with a new £250 million fund from the DCLG - Labour-run Sheffield are moving in the opposite direction. The Daily Mail reports that they are hoping to save £1.6 million a year by switching from weekly to fortnightly bin collections. But this figure seems to ignore any share o the £250 million they might have received for maintaining a weekly service.
Furthermore there will be £1 million spent of "changeover costs" (I think mostly redundancy payments or dustmen) plus another £400,000 or "appropriate communication" with residents - presumably propaganda on how better off they will be having their stinking rubbish left to pile up for two weeks.
So the financial case for Sheffield cutting this service looks shaky. So does the environmental one. There are ways of achieving ecological advances in waste disposal through technological advance. There are also ways to increase recycling through incentives. But some Green ideologues just feel that it doesn't count unless human beings are being made to suffer through authoritarian environmentalism of the kind favoured by Sheffield City Council.
The Department for Communities and Local Government today set out their prospectus for councils to bid for a share of £250 million available for them to enhance their waste collection and recycling service - most prominent being the restoration of weekly bin emptying.
Over 10 million households in England no longer have access to weekly collections thanks to the last Labour Government compelling councils to cut collections. Will this localist budge do the trick? A recent survey, by Sauce-Icaro, found that two thirds (67%) agreed with the statement the Government should mandate weekly collections. Weekly collections had higher satisfaction levels than fortnightly (83-74%).
There has been speculation that councils will spurn this offer. Some will making the (usually dishonest) claim that their residents have no preference for their bins being emptied weekly rather than fortnightly. But other councils are likely to be responsive. Even before the Government has formally opened the scheme for bid, already over 70 councils have raced to signal their interest.
The Sunday Telegraph reports that the Government are to scrap fines for householders who make "innocent mistakes" with their rubbish - such as leaving refuse out for collction on the wrong day, or putting something for reycling which should be categorisd as general waste. Guidance will be issued for councils reduce the fixed penalty fines from their current level of £75 to £110 to between £60 and £80, with a discounted rate of £40 for early payment. The law will then tightened so that fines can only be issued where a council can prove "harm to local amenity."
Environment Secretary Caroline Spelman says:
"Heavy-handed bin fines have for too long been used to punish people for innocent mistakes. We are now consigning them to the scrap heap of history.
"We want to see people helping us to boost recycling rates by putting out their rubbish correctly, but bullying them with fines is not the way to do it. This consultation will mean that only those causing real problems for their community will get punished.
"I want to see this wrong righted as soon as possible, which is why we've written to councils asking them to cut the size of penalties until the law is changed."
"Councils only ever issue bin fines as an absolute last resort when nuisance neighbours have persistently and wilfully caused damage to their local environment or refused to co-operate.
The Western Morning News has carried out a survey of councils in the west country to see what prospects there are of a return to weekly bin collections given the financial incentives that will be on offer. Cornwall, Torby and Torridge already have weekly collections and presumably will be encouraged to keep them. North Devon, run by independents, and Labour-run Exeter are spurning the offer.
But more disappointing is the dismissive attitude of Conservative councils - Torbay, South Hams, Mid Devon and East Devon. Before anyone else reminds me it is a local decision. But whose local decision? Have the Conservative Groups on those councils been consulted on the offer? They can't have been as we don't know what the offer is yet - although we will pretty soon.
So East Devon's spokesman said: "The waste and recycling board has stated that they do not intend to alter the system as it is working extremely well." Oh, yes. Who elected the Waste and Recycling Board? Isn't this something the elected councillors might have a view on? Is the board really so complacent that it doesn't feel the need even to wait for the proposal to see if it could offer an improvement?
Lots of interesting material from the transcript of Eric Pickles giving evidence to the Communities and Local Government Select Committee last week.
The Labour MP Heidi Alexander asked about bin collections:
Heidi Alexander Why is your Department funding weekly collections of black bags, when it is obvious from DEFRA’s website and councils’ own websites that councils with a fortnightly collection of residual waste actually have higher recycling rates?
Mr Pickles: We have not announced the scheme, so I am amazed that you seem to have some kind of insight into the scheme that we producing. We will be producing it in early January. We hope we can. We are basically trying to do three things. We are trying to increase procurement, which we have just been talking about. There are a lot of small authorities that collect waste that perhaps are not getting the best deal, so we are encouraging them to pull together. The second thing we are doing is we are prepared to pay upfront for some capital equipment, for stuff where it is now possible to mechanically separate biological waste. We are also interested in encouraging incentive schemes to recycle.
The Kent Waste Partnership, which represents 12 local authorities in the county, is hoping that restoring or maintaining weekly food waste collections will be sufficient to qualify for funding from the Government's £250 million pot to promote weekly waste collections. Nine of the councils already have weekly collections for food waste - Canterbury, Swale and Thanet are planning to restore weekly collections for food waste from 2013.
I would like to see all rubbish collected weekly. Most people agree that should be the absolute maximum. On the other hand I can see that providing a weekly food waste collection is better than nothing. The rat population doubled under the last Labour Government as a result of pressure to reduce bin collections - from people like Hilary Benn. Official estimates show incidences of rats outside homes has increased 1.7% (percentage of occupied dwellings with rats outside homes) in 1996 to 3.04% in 2007.
But at least Kent Waste Partnership is looking at what deal is on offer. Some Tory council leaders have ruled out returning to weekly bin collections before even seeing the details of what funding they could get in return.
Of course this issue crosses Party lines to some extent. Hyndburn, a Labour council, is looking to restore weekly collections. In Lichfield the Labour opposition leader says the money is a "bung" - but that it should be investigated to see if reintroducing weekly collections would be possible.
Conservative-run Bexley Council has launched a pioneering scheme for rewarding residents for recycling on a community as well as an individual basis. The first phase covers 2,000 flats in East Thamesmead.
The reward system works for individuals who sign up to be members of the scheme, which is run by Local Green Points. In return for these points they have discounts in local shops - so far 30 retailers have signed up. There are also community points which are shared out equally and can be used to make purchases via the Local Green Points website, to pay for “eco-friendly” products, or donated to local charities.
Cllr Gareth Bacon, the Cabinet member for the environment on Bexley says:
“We’re proud that Bexley is already London’s top borough for recycling with a recycling rate over 50%. However we recognise that we can still do more and see the London Green Points scheme as an excellent way to encourage even more people to recycle more waste, as well as helping to build community cohesion.”
It will interesting to see how successful it is. The example for Windsor and Maidenhead is encouraging.
By Eric Pickles, Communities and Local Government Secretary
Ask people what they pay their council tax for, and some might say local schools. Others will say parks or leisure centres. But for many, the bottom line will be – emptying the bins and cleaning the streets.
Local government has had a duty to collect household waste since the nineteenth century, and a duty to collect weekly in the Public Health Act 1936. Those wise Victorians knew that if there was one thing the Town Hall could do to improve people’s lot in life, it was to help them keep their homes clean and sanitary.
A frequent service is a good service. Weekly collections were the norm for much of the last century. Most people still want their bin collected weekly. No-one wants smelly waste lurking in the corner of their kitchen, especially in a long hot summer. Local residents paying an average of £120 a month in council tax on a Band D home, surely it is reasonable to expect the lorry to turn up once every seven days?
The Labour Government, alas, did not think so. In fact, in 2008 national policy - the “Household Waste Prevention Policy Programme” - set a different direction altogether. It demanded councils issue smaller bins or make less frequent collections – and asserted that this was a policy to be ‘nationalised’ across the country.
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