Labour U turn on waste collection changes?

Some Labour candidates seem set to repudiate their parties waste collection plans before the Council elections even take place on Thursday.

They have issued a leaflet distancing themselves from proposals which would see grey bins emptied only once every 3 or 4 weeks ,

Labours plans also involve the introduction of a £35/£37 charge for emptying green bins.

The proposals first surfaced at a special working group (http://tinyurl.com/YorkWRG) which was set up in 2012 to address the Council’s faltering recycling performance.

In late 2014 the Council “consulted” on various options for saving £1.5 million on waste collection costs over the next 2 years.

Only two options for savings were offered; a reduced frequency of grey bin emptying and making an annual charge for emptying a green bin (second and subsequent green bins already attracted a £37 a year charge).

Other choices actually involved additional costs for the Council.

click to access Council wb site

The confused nature of the consultation leaflet—which can be viewed on the Council web site at http://rewiringyork.com/2015/01/28/have-your-say-changes-to-public-spaces-roads-and-waste-collections/ – was heavily criticised at the time.

The Council was later to claim that around 11,000 responses had been received. The Council, however, refused to reveal the results of the consultation . No meeting was held to discuss either the responses or a preferred “way forward”.

In the meantime in February the Council (Labour and Greens voting together) approved a budget for the current financial year.

The budget included economies of £4.5 million from what the Council euphemistically refers to as “transformational savings”.

Of these, £1.07 million was to come from street services like waste collection. (http://tinyurl.com/Rewire2 ).

Having been given a hard time on the doorsteps over their plans to cut waste collection in the City (just about the only service that every resident uses in one way of another) it appears that some Labour candidates are now taking to the lifeboats.

Whoever takes over on Thursday will face a budget shortfall of over £4 million.

Unless the Councils vanity projects are abandoned, then the decisions are likely to hit the quality and quantity of street level public services.

“Save our bins” petition hits 1000 signatures

Call for Council to release results of resident’s opinion poll

Labour and Green Councillors voted through a Council budget for this year which includes a big reduction in waste collection costs.

Only two options for cost reduction were offered to residents in a survey undertaken earlier in the year.

Reduced grey bin emptying frequencies &
£35/£37 pa charge for emptying (all) green (garden waste) bins.

We said at the time that the survey was deeply flawed.

Now the Council has now said that it won’t reveal the results of its survey until after the Council elections on May 7^th.

Labour’s charging plans were leaked last autumn. Not surprisingly neither they or the Greens have been candid about the plans in their election manifestos that are currently being circulated

Copies of the petition for can be downloaded from here

Council failing to communicate on major public service changes

Jargon used to hide York Councils real intentions

Residents attending today’s “drop in” at the Acomb Library (1:00pm – 5:00pm) should beware.

They will be talking to the “rewiring” team about changes to “place based” services.

Use of jargon and euphemisms is a well tested way of disguising the true motivations and intentions of corrupt organisations

In reality the proposals in York include plans to charge for waste collection while making local residents responsible for managing and maintaining local parks and open spaces.

Council to charge for refuse collection

The PR campaign is part of an emerging trend with the Council encouraging other propaganda initiatives aimed at influencing public opinion…..while being economical with the facts

These may include the ostensibly independent (business led) @YorkLocalPlan twitter account.

This group advocates building “at least” 850 additional homes in the City each year and erroneously claims that there is only room for 5000 to be built on brownfield land. In fact, over 2000 additional brownfield planning permissions have been granted during the last 2 years…. all on brownfield sites which were not identified on the draft Local Plan for housing. More are in the pipeline.

Still at least that organisation is unashamedly driven by vested commercial interests.

More worrying is the impenetrable “rewiring” project. It aims to save over £4.5 million a year for the Council.

Of this £800,000 will be cut from street level public services.

It is dressed up as a devolution project in a report to the Councils Cabinet next week

The reality is given away in a paragraph in another report which says,

” Community Open Space Management – As part of the review of Place Based Services the Council are looking to transfer the management of open space to local communities. Such a transfer would reduce both day to day and long term costs and enable the Council to achieve savings”.

The Council report – rightly – does criticise some local Councillors for not providing “leadership”.

In truth many – particularly on the Labour side – do not live in the wards that they represent and rarely even visit the people that they are supposed to represent. They don’t produce newsletters, don’t survey public service quality standards and only follow up issues when there is an election in the offing. They are the people who are least likely to drive community action.

It is also fanciful to suggest that all communities have the capacity to take on public service management .

While the devolution of powers to local communities is welcome

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