By Andrew Clarke

Last updated at 11:57, Wednesday, 03 October 2012

Controversial changes to bin collections in Copeland have been agreed – with warnings that the most severe cuts are yet to come.

Elaine Woodburn

Copeland council’s Executive rubber-stamped proposals for a major overhaul of the way it collects doorstep waste.

The shake-up, which will save £120,000 from the council’s budget, includes introducing communal roadside collection points for some ‘off-route’ homes and limiting garden waste collections to one brown bin per home.

However, council leader Elaine Woodburn revealed that the cuts to the waste service are minimal compared to those that will be made in the near future.

“We do not want to make this decision in any shape or form,” she said. “It will mean changes for people but, let’s be under no illusion, it is a minor change compared to what is coming. There are a lot more difficult decisions to come.”

Councillor Allan Holliday added: “We are having to make decisions that none of us like due to the cuts that have been, and will continue to be, imposed on us by the Government. The Government has gone out of its way to hit local councils. We have made cuts already, and will unfortunately have to continue to do so.”

The proposals have been met with anger, particularly from residents of off-route homes who are critical of moves to introduce road-end collection points.

Each off-route area will be assessed individually, the meeting heard, and changes to the homes that take more than an average of one minute to collect imposed over the next 12 months. Those on assisted collections who live off-route will continue to receive this assistance.

The changes have been agreed after a three-month consultation. Other proposals agreed include changing the criteria for families to be eligible for large bins; raising the threshold from five residents to six. This will be phased in over the next 12 months. Plans to charge a one-off fee for families to have a large bin have been scrapped.

The brown bin limit will be imposed from November.

Plans to modify the way the council collects waste from those who require assistance have also been agreed – having been welcomed by Copeland Disability Forum and South Copeland Disability Group.

The assisted collection service will continue with criteria introduced to determine what levels of assistance households will be entitled to.

Councillor George Clements said: “We need to make it clear that it’s not just those on benefits who will receive assisted collections; it’s clear in the policy that people ‘in exceptional circumstances’ can get assistance, so everyone who needs help will get it.”

The saving will be made, says the council, by changing the way it collects rubbish to allow it to remove one bin lorry from the road and redeploy its crew.

All 33,000 households in the borough will undergo change in some form but the vast majority will only be an alteration to collection days (from November) as refuse lorries are re-routed to increase efficiency.

The cuts have targeted the collections that take longer than the average of 20 seconds to complete; the 1,500 with assisted collections, the 750 with off-route collections, the 1,500 with large bins and those with multiple brown bins.

First published at 11:31, Wednesday, 03 October 2012
Published by http://www.newsandstar.co.uk