Monday 18 February 2019

Something is rotten in the Derbyshire Dales.

Across the UK many councils are now looking to charge for garden waste be it for an all year or part year service an example of which until recently is Derby UK where a part year service was £40 for garden waste to be collected April to November.
The result of the Derby charge for service was a devastated recycling rate and so thankfully Derby City Council have seen sense and a free service restarts in April 2019.
  No sooner do we get this good news from Derby in relation to the garden waste service returning to a free service do we get the bad news from Derbyshire Dales District Council that they are proposing to INTRODUCE  a charged for service claiming that they could not continue their free service to residents once they negotiate their new waste recycling contract.
Now there is a key difference between the two councils because while Derby City Council is a disposal authority meaning it has to fund all of its waste and recycling Derbyshire Dales is just a district council and while it has to fund its recycling service it does not have to fund its residual waste disposal which is a key difference between the two councils.
The proposal to introduce a charged for service in the Derbyshire Dales area was enthusiastically welcomed by many councillors at a council meeting in late 2018 on 29th November. There was talk of the councils recycling rate being at 57% and recent government publications suggest it could even be as high as 60% which is an impressive recycling rate but once a charged for service for garden waste is put in place where will that rate go other than down in a spiral ?
The councils recycling rate uses tonnage of recycling as the method for generating the councils recycling rate and as garden waste is a heavy material removal of that waste from the recycling stream clearly reduces the overall tonnage of recyclate and that has to then impact the councils recycling rate of which they are so proud.
Then we have to consider the slight of hand that's going to take place here at Derbyshire Dales District Council when it comes to waste costs linked to recycling and disposal.
Derbyshire Dales District Council is simply a district council and has to pay the cost of collecting waste and recycling waste materials but what it does NOT have to do is pay for the disposal of residual waste because that is the responsibility of Derbyshire County Council which is the disposal authority.
All Derbyshire Dales District Council has to do is collect and deliver residual waste to where Derbyshire County Council directs them towards which could either be directly to the controversial Sinfin waste incineration plant in Derby or to a transfer site in the county for onward shipment to Sinfin to be burnt.
Now its not rocket science to realise that if your a district council looking to reduce costs if you can force waste you were previously paying to compost into the residual waste stream that you DON'T pay to dispose of and even better get people to agree to pay a charge for the waste that still does get composted then by some wonder of wonders you have saved your council money but what you are not doing is saving your residents money because by diverting compostable waste into the residual waste stream which is very commonly vastly more expensive per tonne than if composted you have transferred a cost to the disposal authority which in this case is Derbyshire County Council which in turn will have to recoup that increased cost from residents of the County via the likes of an increase in council tax.
There may however be a happy ending to this story!
In recent days the UK government have announced proposals that they will require councils to offer a free garden waste service so the plans of Derbyshire Dales District Council may still be consigned to the compost heap!

 ©SIMON BACON 2019

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