Weekly bin plan rejected

A bid by opposition councillors have called for weekly bin collections for ‘residual waste’ to be introduced after the council introduced smaller bins earlier this year, has been rejected

At a meeting of the full council on Thursday a motion proposed by councillors Jason Zadrozny and Tom Hollis was defeated.

But council leader Cheryl Butler added: “We have voted against the motion but I will set up an informal meeting with opposition members to see if we can move forward.”

In their motion councillors said the result of the EU referendum will mean that the European Union will not be setting recycling targets or fines for the district as previously feared by the administration.

Internal reports from Ashfield District Council demonstrate it would be possible to have weekly collections of residual waste (red lidded bins) while maintaining all other collections for under £500,000 per annum.

The motion called for a cross party working group to review the changes to waste collections, their impact on residents and the effectiveness of the changes.

It included at options like weekly residual waste collections, increased capacity for commercial collection and changes to vehicles to consider split lorries.

Coun Zadrozny said: “Members have read the motion and have decided which way they are going to vote. If you look at the second section on a working group to decide the future of our waste strategy, for reasons we have discussed nobody is going to tell us what to do any more . I am asking for a working group to decide the future of our waste strategy .

“If we want to be ambitious and pragmatic and avoid the tensions in this chamber over the previous messy waste strategy we need to get something akin to the Local plan which gets everyone around the table in the earl stages.”