Wheelie bins in Malvern get council go-ahead (From Worcester News)

Wheelie bins in Malvern get council go-ahead

5:10pm Thursday 16th August 2012 in News By Robert Hale

MALVERN Hills district councillors will go ahead with the introduction of wheelie bins for recycled waste.

At a special meeting on Tuesday, members voted to approve a bid for £1.54 million from the Government’s weekly collection support scheme for the project.

Previous attempts to introduce wheelie bins have been highly unpopular, with opponents saying they are visually inappropriate, unsuitable for many homes in the district and not wanted by much of the public.

Council leader Councillor David Hughes told members that the council was obliged to introduce glass collection by 2015. This, combined with reductions in council grants from central government, jeopardises the current two-bag weekly collection.

Council officers recommend the best way to safeguard the weekly black bag collection was to introduce a fortnightly collection of recycled waste using wheelie bins. Coun Hughes said there was a “very real danger” that if the bid was not made, the council would end up losing its weekly black bag collection.

Councillors voted 21-8 with one abstention to approve the scheme, although few seemed enthusiastic.

Coun Anthony Warburton warned that far from safeguarding the weekly collection, the proposal would endanger it, saying that in a few years, the council would be pressured for “the abandonment of the black sack system and residual waste would then be collected using the already-installed wheeled bin system on a fortnightly basis”.

The meeting was controversial from the beginning, when council chairman Paul Tuthill left after being told that comments he made last week showed he had a “closed mind” on the issue.

Coun Tuthill had said wheelie bins were “totally inappropriate”, and John Williams, the council’s head of policy and governance, said that he should not take part in the meeting. He said that if Coun Tuthill took part, it could invalidate whatever decision the council made.

After several councillors spoke up in his support, Coun Tuthill decided to leave the meeting with Coun Clive Smith joining him in a gesture of solidarity.