At the end of September, the Environment & Communities Committee met to decide the future of the three Household Waste and Recycling Centres (HWRC) located at Poynton, Bollington and Middlewich. The results of the Public Consultation were clear, residents wanted their tips to stay! Labour and Independent Councillors on the committee refused to deviate from the recommendations to move to closure and a residents’ petition (of over 7,000 signatures) was ignored.
Bearing in mind how many consultations have already been conducted, it has to be wondered why yet more taxpayers money was wasted on another when the outcome had already been pre-determined.
Sutton councillor Chris O’Leary (Con) said:
“We're told that there is only one option that we can agree to, because that's the only one that is affordable.”
But he said he could not vote in favour of closing the tips because the committee had not been provided with the proper data.
He went on to state that councillors had not been shown the consequences of the closure of Congleton tip in 2021 and there was no evaluation in the report about the mobile service set up when Middlewich, Bollington and Poynton tips were ‘temporarily’ closed. In addition, councillors had been provided with no information about the environmental impacts of the three closures.”
“We're talking about requiring residents in Poynton and Disley to travel at least 30 minutes each way to get to the Macclesfield recycling site,” he said, adding there was nothing in the report about the environmental impact of the additional CO2 ‘let alone the environmental impacT of fly-tipping”.
Knutsford councillor Tony Dean (Con) said the savings this would make were ‘a tiny pimple on the face of the problem’.
“This will do nothing to stop us hitting S114 [effective bankruptcy],” “It’s not going to help at all and it’s such a painful thing to do for our residents.”
Cllr Janet Clowes (Wybunbury) highlighted the failure of the pilot ‘mobile tips’ to meet the demand of residents who tried to access them and specifically identified the failure of officers to accurately manage the expectations of Town and Parish Councils.
Cllr Clowes asked why representatives of Bollington Town Council (present at the meeting), could not simply take on the running of their HWRC, as they had requested and as had been previously discussed with CEC Officers.
Officers admitted that despite recent discussions with Bollington Town Council, (that included the Town Council potentially paying CEC to provide the service until March 2025), this did not include the handing over of the site as this would be a contravention of CEC’s statutory functions. This came as a surprise to those attending the meeting and clearly reflected poor management of Town Council’s expectations.
In addition, Cllr Clowes asked why CEC had not followed up on previous Conservative proposals to install Vehicle Number-plate recognition systems as this would have significant impacts on reducing costs from non-CEC residents, which when combined with reduced opening hours would still enable savings to be made and the tips remain open.
Officers admitted (and this had not been included in the Committee Reports), that numberplate recognition systems WOULD in fact, be included as a requirement of any new operator when the HWRC Contract is re-procured next year. They had not, however conducted any cost-benefit analysis of costs saved with or without reduced opening hours.
Conservative Councilors are only too aware of the dire fiscal state of the Council and the desperate need to make savings after 5 years of Labour/Independent Administration.
However, the failure of CEC to proactively explore alternative cost-saving exercises, despite available options having been raised (and examples from other councils such as Nottingham and Derby provided), is why all five Conservative Councillors voted against the HWRC Closures.
