Residents are working on an ambitious project to establish more bird boxes in the area.

They’ll be welcoming the Lord Mayor to an event which has been scheduled to take place at the Foxwood Community Centre on Wednesday 31st October.

All are welcome

Against a background of escalating landfill tax payments and with York slipping down the recycling league tables, the Labour led Council has put off making a potentially controversial decision about the introduction of charges for emptying green wheelie bins.

The Labour controlled Sheffield Council led the way with a £57.60 charge which it introduced earlier in the year.

Now the latest Council performance figures, released since the Beckfield Lane recycling centre was closed, show that, for the first time in a decade, York households are sending more waste to landfill than the regional average.

The data from waste collections indicates that waste recycled, reused or composted is currently forecast this year to be 46.58% compared to a target of 47.61% and the percentage of waste land filled is forecast to be higher than its target of 51.83% for 2012/13, remaining static at just over 52.9%.

This means that the Council’s budget could be overspent by around £160,000.

Labours green bin emptying tax would be hugely unpopular and this may be the reason why the promised public consultation exercise scheduled for August was abandoned.

Now the Council will not even debate the proposal until December. Even if the plan is agreed, the saving of £50,000 to this year’s budget is unlikely to be achieved. The majority of the hoped for income (£200,000) was, however, scheduled to arrive in 2013/14. Evidence of resistance to the charges, where they have been introduced elsewhere in the country, suggests that this figure is also optimistic.

What may happened though is that green bin emptying in winter could be abandoned altogether, while the rationalisation of bin rounds (saving £300,000) may be also pushed through.

This would mean recycling collections on different days of the week with the resulting confusion likely to increase the amount of waste sent to landfill (and hence the amount of landfill tax that residents will have to find) .