Pushing for bin review result

IN last week’s Ashbourne News Telegraph there was a round-up of last year’s stories on pages 16 and 17, covering the second half of the year.

In the July section it stated that “Derbyshire Dales District Councillors rejected calls for an investigation into the “inadequate” bin collections” (by Serco). This is not quite correct.

In fact district councillors had to wait until October before they were allowed an opportunity to debate having an investigation.

On July 5, at the Community and Environment Committee meeting, Cllr Peter O’brien (Independent) did in fact request in a written question that there should be an investigation into the way Serco were carrying out their waste contract with DDDC.

However his request was rejected by the Conservative chairman of the meeting, Cllr Chris Furness, who read a prepared statement. There was no debate or vote.

It is important for readers to realise that the agendas for council meetings are very much in the hands of whichever party is the controlling group and items that opposition councillors may wish to see discussed may never see the light of day.

This was why it was necessary for me to organise the petition that was presented to DDDC Full Council on October 14 calling for an independent inquiry.

This show of public support plus a motion proposed by Lib Dem Cllr Paul Cruise and Independent Cllr Colin Swindell allowed the matter to be debated and voted on.

The result was a unanimous vote in favour of an Independent Review of the Serco contract.

The report of the review was due to be completed by December 31 for presentation to the Community and Environment Committee “in January”.

It is therefore with some concern that I have to report that the only meeting of this committee at present scheduled for January has been cancelled with the reason given as “lack of ready and substantive business”.

I have contacted the chair of this committee and he says that

“the intention remains that an extraordinary meeting of the Community and Environment Committee will be held in

January, the details of which will be published as soon as the arrangements are confirmed”.

Peter Dobbs

Ashbourne