A quick reminder that Oadby St.Peter’s residents who would usually have a garden waste collection today will have it collected later this week between Tuesday 23rd April and Friday 26th April due to the Bank Holiday.
You’ll need to make sure your garden waste bin(s) is at the edge of your property each day by 7am until it has been emptied.
Reports of fly-tipping across Leicestershire went up by over a fifth following cuts to tip opening times by the Conservatives on the County Council.
The Conservatives also imposed charges for taking “hard-core” waste (soil, rubble and crockery) to the county tips.
Government figures show that the district and borough councils in Leicestershire had to clear up 3749 fly-tipping incidents in 2017-18 compared to 3099 in 2015-16: an increase of 650.
The estimated costs of clearing up this mess was an extra £90,000: up by two thirds on the 2015-16 figure.
The information does not include reports of fly-tipping on private land.
Whilst we can’t be sure that the increase in fly-tipping is directly due to the changes, it is noticeable that the increase is 3 times the national average.
There was also no increase in Leicester, where tips are not controlled by the county council.
The borough and district councils also investigate and issue penalties for those caught fly-tipping. Between 2015-16 and 2017-18 these also went up by a fifth, compared to no change nationally.
Both the effort to clear up the mess and catch those responsible is costing borough and district councils, and therefore Council Tax payers in Leicestershire, more.
The county council is trying to save money because Conservative MPs (including the one elected here) have voted for swinging cuts to council budgets.
Even then, Conservative councillors could have found savings elsewhere, or kept the busiest tips like Oadby open longer.
Instead their actions have been followed by an increase in fly-tipping and the possibility of dangerous contamination of public land by waste that should be disposed of properly.
The local councils support a campaign site to reduce fly tipping and catch the perpetrators.
The latest fallout from government cuts is that Oadby schools will lose free waste collections. This means more pressure on school budgets as they have to find the money for this basic service.
Up to now, Liberal Democrats on Oadby and Wigston Borough Council had been able to provide free rubbish collections for schools, helping them to spend more money on educating our children rather than on paying for recycling to be taken away.
Oadby and Wigston had been able to continue to provide free recycling collections from schools, where other local councils had not, because the Liberal Democrats had ensured that the council was one of the first to offer kerbside recycling collections.
By being one of the first, the Liberal Democrats were able to set up the council’s own sorting centre. This allowed the service to make money, which was used to help provide the funds for extra services like free school rubbish collections and free garden waste collections for residents.
Theresa May’s Conservative government continue to make huge cuts to local council funding and Council Tax is not allowed to be increased enough to cover this loss.
As a result, Conservative-run Leicestershire County Council decided to change how they funded recycling, which has meant Oadby and Wigston won’t be able to keep the recycling sorting centre.
This, together with cuts to Oadby and Wigston’s money from the government has meant that the council can no longer afford to keep school waste collections free.
The Conservatives on County Council are in a complete mess on this. Tory cabinet member Blake Pain is promoting recycling in schools but at the same time, he voted for the changes that led to Oadby schools having to pay to get it collected.
With the damage caused by plastics in our oceans and the need to recycle as much of our rubbish as we can, these actions show how unimportant our environment is to the Conservatives.
The news comes as independent research shows over 1 in 14 primary schools are running deficit budgets in the East Midlands. Our Oadby schools will have even less money to spend on teaching as a result of cuts by Theresa May’s government and decisions by the Conservatives at County Hall.