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News and Comment September 2015

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12 September (Part 1) - Pay the bin tax and get less service than the refuseniks

My slightly troublesome bin responded positively to careful heat treatment and the plastic hinge has relaxed into a better position. But not everyone is happy.


StreetlifeSuzanne C makes a good point when she says residents who paid the bin tax should not have been left without one but some of the complainers on Streetlife appear to have forgotten about the practicalities.

John Ferry who is paid to lie on behalf of Bexley council may have said that 27,000 orders was significantly above expectations when the truth is that the council was banking on getting 30,000 but they would nevertheless have been very silly to have ordered 30,000 bins up front.

In all probability they waited until orders approached 10,000 before putting in an order and that batch is being distributed now with a second and third due later.

Geographically speaking it isn’t practical to collect the old bins or deliver the new on an individual coordinated basis, it has to be done street by street.

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Where things have gone wrong is the withdrawal of old bins a month before the new service starts.

My own enquiries reveal that it wasn’t just me who lost the old bin last Saturday, everyone nearby who had ordered a new one lost theirs too whether their new one was in the first batch or the last. Those who didn’t pay up still have their old one and benefitting from a normal service. I know that because I used my non-gardening neighbour’s bin yesterday and it was both emptied and returned to its normal position.

Why are those who didn’t pay the bin tax getting a better service than those who did?

It would have been far better if the collection of old bins had been deferred until the end of the month. After all, the new service is not going to start until then.

The distribution arrangements could never be perfectly fair but a council that was truly ‘Working for you’ would not have arbitrarily left a month gap between services just because they are not legally obliged to remove garden waste.

That does not apply to food waste but thanks to Bexley’s lack of forethought I have nowhere to put it. (†) Distribution of the little food only bins has been just as haphazard as their big brothers’ and I can see no excuse for that. The number required was known from the outset. In the next road they have them, in mine no one does.

† This is theory rather than practice. I have never found the need to throw food in any bin. The new one will be stored in the loft where the last one has been for ten years.

 

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