Councils have begun charging householders to dump waste at rubbish tips, it has emerged, leading the Government to launch a review into the arbitrary fees.
Some 47 local authorities now insist on payments including Buckinghamshire council, which released a new “price list” this month demanding up to £20 for items including boilers, taps, lavatory seats, fence posts, plasterboard, pond liners and wood burners.
Boilers, taps, wood burners. Nice pieces of metal most of those. Worth real money. Charging for accepting them goes beyond cheeky. The profit margin from having done so must be enormous. Assuming, obviously, that a council is switched on enough to have an agreement with the local gyppo scrappie.
Actually, we’ve got a couple of local councillors around here. What’s the profit centre looking like at the local town dump?
Cue more fly tipping.
Metal? Just leave it outside the house in London!. On the one occasion i had to get rid a hot water tank at the tip i just tapped it with a key and magically staff took it away before it ever was entered into the system.
Cue more fly tipping.
Yes, then more pretend shock and outrage from the council, and demands for more money to solve the problem.
I assume all governing systems are as stupid and short-sighted as ours, I can’t believe ours is unique in this regard.
The definition of ‘normal household waste’, which councils are obliged to collect, is being eroded. Eventually there will be so little that I can legitimately put in the bin that there really won’t be any justification for all that council tax I pay.
BiG – that was my first thought too. To overlook so obvious an effect of charging at ‘recycling’ facilities suggests purblind idiocy worthy of Captain Potato.
How long before some enterprising souls are smelting down metal using piles of waste plastic as the heat source?
Bucks CC have also recently closed our local recycling centre (which was almost always quick and easy to use) so I now have to take stuff twice as far to High Heavens (yes, that’s a real place) which usually has lengthy queues (now made worse by 50% more people trying to use it).
At the same time they’re having a local campaign with employees handing out leaflets to decry fly tipping – which was already a problem before the new charges. Joined up government, I think this is called.
which usually has lengthy queues (now made worse by 50% more people trying to use it).
They’ll soon be charging/fining you for all that waiting around with engines idling.
I expect Councils will get a “free pass; get out of jail; morally smug” card so long as they sign up to the Fair Tax Mark Council scheme.
Just like SSE getting a FTM and then being fined a couple of weeks later for NMW infractions.
The EU created re-cycling farce is the ill-smelling elephant in the –also ill-smelling– room of UK waste disposal. Now we are heading out time the EU antics were dropped and it all went to landfill save whatever might actually be re-cyc’d for a real profit.
But our own eco-shite must now be fought.
UKIP needs to re-package itself ready for the vast number of post-Brexit battles to come.
UKIP?
Really?
Chris Miller. Bledlow ridge? That’s where I used to go, quick, easy, helpful crew. Of course I’m not exactly in Bucks but Oxon’s tips are all miles away. As soon as it closed there was fly-tipping, some just dumped in the middle of the main road blocking traffic.
“I assume all governing systems are as stupid and short-sighted as ours, I can’t believe ours is unique in this regard.”
Here, they charge you a couple of euros for building waste. Anything domestic is taken free, and you can even arrange collection. Which sometimes happens, sometimes stuff gets recycled informally when you leave it out before the collectors can come around, which is technically theft but obviously for the best.
“Worth real money”
Which is why ALL my metal waste is taken to the local scrap merchant (Registered with the appropriate authority, before anyone starts asking questions). Every so often I make up a round trip – shopping, taking donations to a local charity, etc – so doing as little environmental damage as possible. I’m waiting to see how the proposed bottle & can recycling scheme works out, as this may pay better rates…
Ducky–Batten was correct that the next urgent battle is to halt the left’s import of new voters and takeover merchants. Because of Treason May’s treachery he mistimed the start of round two before round one was done.
It maybe UKIP is now too damaged. But TBP seems good only for Brexit. That is not a criticism but Brexit is only the start. We need to create a decent Party to fight the UK’s scum supply and give decent folks a rallying point.
In Paris you can chuck literally anything on the street and a truck comes around and collects it, but not before the local Roma continent has picked through it. Here in Annecy you need to take it to one of three or four déchèteries dotted about the outskirts of the town. Their working hours can be a bit odd but they’re convenient, easy to use, free, and the dispose of everything. So maybe this incompetence is a British thing?
@Rhoda
Yes, Wigans* Lane was the official name. Just think, we might have met there IRL …
I don’t know where the nearest ‘tip’ would be for you. I may end up using Amersham if I can’t face High Heavens.
* God knows why as it’s almost as far from Wigan as you can get in England. Probably a misspelling of something or other 🙂
Here, they charge you a couple of euros for building waste. Anything domestic is taken free, and you can even arrange collection. Which sometimes happens, sometimes stuff gets recycled informally when you leave it out before the collectors can come around, which is technically theft but obviously for the best.
Permit me to go out on a limb – I expect Germany doesn’t have a problem with piles of waste dumped in country lanes?
From my annual trips cycling around rural France, I cannot recall ever seeing anything dumped, anywhere. Here, you can ride for an hour and see a couple of passing places on lanes full of dumped crap, right next to the signs threatening a £10,000 fine for fly-tipping.
Does my fucking head in.
@ Tim Newman
When I lived in the east end of Glasgow you could out on the street and they’d take it away. Sofas, TVs, baths, whatever. It was fair game for anyone to go through whilst it sat there though.
Our local tips are mostly privately run. Pay a fee for general rubbish (normally based on weight, drive onto weigh bridge at the beginning, again at the end, pay your $30 or so). For things like appliances or if you have a load of mostly metal then there is normally disposed of at no charge as there is considerable value in the scrap itself.
Garden waste is a lower price than general waste and goes off to be composted. The tip then sells the compost back to you.
They also loan out trailers for no cost so that you can bring junk or take compost etc home. All in all it is a pretty good service; and at a reasonable price.
The owners make a pretty good living out of it too; we sold our old house in one of the most expensive suburbs of Auckland to the people who own and manage the local one.
If you don’t want to pay then once a year you can book in for the council to collect “inorganic waste” directly from your house. You are allowed a pile up to a certain size (pretty much a couple of sofas), with no additional charge as it is rolled up into the rates.