The Cabinet Member for the Environment, Cllr Mike Steptoe, made an interesting decision on April 30th. The District Council will be applying to the government for extra grant to bring back weekly recycling for all items for flats.
Basically, the government is keen to bring back weekly recycling across the UK, and is providing 250 million Pounds towards this. Now, the government is trying to cut the national deficit , which needs to be done. So it’s a bit surprising that the government is willing to hand out 250 million Pounds in this way, especially when districts such as Rochford have shown you can do so well with fortnightly collection of dry items.
But anyway, that’s the amount of money thats around, and there’s been around 180 bids so far from councils for this cash. Rochford is applying for a relatively modest amount, to help with the most difficult places to recycle – flats without much space to store waste. The extra grant would help with the extra costs of a weekly collection for flats, plus two smaller vehicles. This seems a sensible thing to do, we back Cllr Steptoe and the officers on this, so lets hope we can have a successful bid.
You can download the decision and the background report from here – it’s the decision made on April 30th (113kb)