Political opinion: Lib Dems raise concerns raised about changes to council’s tips
The Liberal Democrats have expressed concerns about the proposed changes to introduce a pre-booking system for all West Northamptonshire Council’s Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRC’s).
Proposals announced yesterday (22nd September) will require people to pre-book a 10-minute drop-off slot, with booking needed to be made online or via telephone. The new system has a planned launch date of the 1stNovember.
“The system, before changes were introduced on 1st April this year, worked well. Sites were open 5 days a week and over hours that meant a good deal of flexibility for access, and I never received one complaint” says Cllr Jonathan Harris, Lib Dem Group leader and representative for Brixworth, where one of the HWRC’s is located.
“The seven-day operation was meant to create better access but since the changes I receive regular complaints about capacity issues with residents often telling me that they are turned away and comment on the overall tidiness of the site. We think that this system will potentially make matters worse”.
Cllr David Tarbun who represents Towcester continues, “We don’t understand why we are putting obstacles and more bureaucracy in place for our residents. What problem are we trying to solve? The council is increasingly moving to a digital based system, which require people to access information online, fill in forms etc but we still have many residents who don’t work like this. Whilst this new approach will have a telephone booking system, we know that some residents experience difficulties getting through to services and get very frustrated about having to press one for this, two for something else and so on. We are also concerned that this could lead to a spike in fly tipping – at least in the short term”.
The Liberal Democrats are asking for more consultation with residents and for the system to be piloted to test the system first at one stie and to learn from any feedback before going live across the area.
“We want resident’s views to be heard, so we have launched a petition, which can be found on the West Northamptonshire Liberal Democrat website here:
We are also putting paper petitions into our communities also so that everyone has the chance to express their views. This is an important service for residents, and we need to make life easy for residents to recycle, not more difficult”.