Councillor warns Northamptonshire's tips are opening for "essential rubbish" only .. and ID will be need to be shown

A leading county councillor has revealed staff will be checking for "essential rubbish only" when the gates at Northamptonshire's rubbish tips are finally unlocked next week.

And residents will need ID to prove they are not "waste tourists" as the local authority braces itself for a rush to the tips.

Northamptonshire is among the last of England's local authorities to reopen tips and has seen other authority sites swamped by eager tippers.

In Luton, the wait to get into one of the local tips was 2½ hours by lunchtime on the first day of opening. And elsewhere, visits have been staggered using car registrations with odd or even numbers on certain days while some have used online bookings to manage visits to tips.

Cllr Jason Smithers, county council cabinet member for highways and place, said: "We decided to keep our sites closed for a little while longer and just delaying by a week allowed us to digest what has happened in Luton and other areas to make sure we can manage the situation.

"We are putting countless measures in place such as one-way systems and reducing the number of vehicles allowed in at one time.

"Now we are just asking Northamptonshire to use that fantastic common sense that's be shown over the last few months and if it's not essential then don't come because we just want essential waste that can cause hazards to health.

"If you've done a DIY project and you've got a sink sitting out in the garden, that's not going to cause any health issues. So just leave that until the lockdown restrictions come further down the Government scale.

"We will be going down the lines to check if your waste is essential and you need to bring some ID with you. We don't want to get to the issue we call waste tourism with people coming in from other counties because they've heard we're open."

Cllr Smithers told BBC Northampton: "If it does get really busy and starts posing a safety risk to other highway users, then we will close and ask people to move on.

"Police will be patrolling approach roads and we have deployed some of our traffic warden officers to help with the queueing outside because we are expecting to be quite busy.

"Only one person will be allowed out of vehicles and the guys there will not be able to physically help by carrying rubbish as they would normally do."

"We're going for a sort of business as usual to start with. But if it does become an issue we will close the centres down for an hour or two hours to clear the backlog and if we go to an online booking system then that is something we will relay via our messaging systems and website.

"Nothing is out of bounds, will do whatever it takes to make sure these centres operate safely."

Six of the county's nine household waste recycling centres are back in business on Monday (May 18) after closing for eight weeks during the Covid-19 lockdown.

Each tip will only open on its usual days, so anyone heading to Northampton's Sixfields site must wait until Tuesday while Kettering and Rushden will only open for the first time on Wednesday.

Northants' nine HWRCs will be open from 10am–6pm on their usual opening days as follows:

Monday: Brixworth, Corby, Daventry, Ecton, Towcester, Wellingborough.

Tuesday: Corby, Daventry, Sixfields, Wellingborough.

Wednesday: Kettering, Rushden, Sixfields.

Thursday: Brixworth, Ecton, Kettering, Rushden, Towcester.

Friday: Brixworth, Corby, Daventry, Ecton, Kettering, Rushden, Sixfields, Towcester, Wellingborough.

Saturday & Sunday: Brixworth, Corby, Daventry, Ecton, Kettering, Rushden, Sixfields, Towcester, Wellingborough.