The Government's review of local government funding appears to be taking an absolute age. They started it before the last election to stop the row over the the rises in Council Tax, for which they were taking the blame. The guy running the review now and again sticks his head above the parapet, floats a controversial idea, and then dissapears again.
Now we have this latest idea. He wants us to be charged for the amount of waste we put out for the bin collection. The problem with this idea is that we would be reliant on the bin men weighing the waste before chucking it in the truck. They then have to record that information and we get sent a bill. I am sceptical this will work or is practical although to be fair they manage it in other European countries. Firstly it will massively increase the bin collection costs and secondly I really question how many people will argue over their bill. Are you confident that Local Government could run such a scheme and charge you the right amount?
But then look at this quote from the accountant leading the review:
"I am clear that if people want more
services, want to tackle difficult problems like congestion,
environmental sustainability and water quality ... you can't just
tackle those problems and say you don't want to pay more tax."
He clearly does not understand that we are already paying a lot more tax and getting nothing new from our local authority for the money.We do get some things from our Council - we get "plans". If you go to the Kingston Council website and search for the word 'plan' you get 3,860 results. The first results you see are:
Local Implemetation Plan
Chidlern and Young people's Plan
School travel Plans
Sports plan
Best value Performance Plan
Forward Plan
Community Plan
Unitary development Plan
Area Action Plan
Workplace Travel Plans
Urban design Action Plan
Borough Spending Plan
Religious Education Development Plan
Thames Waterway Plan
and it goes on and on and on.........
We are employing people to sit around writing all these things. So if we are to have charging for the amount of rubbish we throw away how about we get a refund for all the useless plans the local authority produces.
3 comments:
To be fair, Westminster Council has been using a system of charging for rubbish for many years. Businesses (I'm not sure whether it applies to individual residents) can buy stickers which they adhere to any bit of rubbish they put out.
My beef with Kingston Council is getting the council to collect my recycling. And knowing which day of the week (every couple of weeks) it is supposed to happen.
We have finally got recycling bins after six months of asking.
Central Government seems to require most of these plans - many of them are audited at a huge cost. Some of them you call rubbish are necessary. Area action plans replace the UDP for example. The Forward plan seems about the only mechanism for knowing what the Executive is doing. What happened to Best Value - and all the money spent on that?
On rubbish though it really is galling that those of us who make an effort to recycle and minimise rubbish only get a 'green satisfaction' from doing so whilst the majority round here who do not bother have no sanction taken and make our actions pretty meaningless.
If it is too much bother and cost to charge by weight - then how about fining for not recycling a certain amount each fortnight. No action is not an option unless we do not give a stuff about the environment.
I accept that Government ask for "some" of these plans but we still pay for them in taxation. Some though have become a little more optional than they were in the past. Take the Community Plan, we had a great fanfare when that was produced but has any resident said anything about the fact that most of the objectives in the plan just remained that; objectives. I have said for a long time that this authority plans well but delivers little.
On your broader recycling point I do think that we should be looking carefully at the Barnet model where residents do face fines for not recycling. I gather they have seen recycling rates increase rapidly and they bhave not actually fined anyone, they just have the threat available.
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