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Weekly bin collection return scrapped - what do you think?
Cllr Mark Thompson becomes a refuse loader in Mexborough, to learn more about how Sita works. Picture: Liz Mockler D7219LM
DONCASTER Council has rubbished plans to bring back a weekly bin collection after refusing government money to make it happen.
Coun Mark Thompson, the authority’s cabinet member for finance, corporate services, environment, trading and support services, said it would not been applying for a share of £250 million being made available to councils by local government secretary Eric Pickles.
The cash has been ring fenced for spending on maintaining or bringing back weekly collections.
Doncaster scrapped weekly bin collections in 2005 in a bid to increase recycling rates.
Coun Thompson said: “We feel that our current service is more than sufficient since residents have a weekly green box recycling collection in addition to alternate green and black bin collections. “
The low number of complaints and problems serves as evidence that our service is working well for us.”
Coun Thompson said the council feared the money would not maintain weekly collections for the five year Government requirement.
He added “The worry is that we would have to divert already stretched budgets to pay for the additional service and so face the position where we had to reduce our recycling collections to pay for additional rubbish collections.
“The extra waste would also have a big impact on the 25-year contract we are currently refining with Barnsley and Rotherham. “
•What do you think about the council’s decision? Email us by clicking on Kate Mason’s name at the top of this page.
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Weather for Doncaster
Saturday 26 May 2012
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Temperature: 9 C to 22 C
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Wind direction: North east
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Temperature: 10 C to 22 C
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Comments
There are 2 comments to this article
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heatherangelasmith
Tuesday, February 14, 2012 at 10:19 PMDoncaster have made the right decision. Everyone needs to be looking at recycling and not creating waste to send to landfill. Recycling is the way forward not encouraging waste. Large families and communities need greater recycling facilities. Recycling can create jobs and is sustainable
CantleyBoy
Thursday, February 9, 2012 at 03:39 PMwhy would we want to go back to weekly collections? I bet the money available to us for going to weekly collections would be a mere drop in the ocean compared to the increased cost in landfill, cost in additional vehicles fuel etc to collect the bins, Going back to weekly collection would be going a huge step backwards and would have serious implications on our recycling rate and leave us liable to government fines by not hitting specfic targets set by the EU. Again which would not be met by the grant available. We already get a weekly collection, of Recyclables! we have only just got used to the existing regime, why change it again! the governement stumped up this money just before their manifesto last year, it was a way of buttering up the public to try and take their eyes off the failiures of job losses and the economic crisis. Id be very surprised to see if any authority takes this up, its compleley ludicrous!! Congratulations donny council on making the right decision
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