Brown bin complaint

I AM writing to complain about the large increase in the brown bin charge, following shortly after the increase in council tax. I understand that there has to be an increase but it is surely not necessary for it to be £12.

This will lead to lots of people cancelling their brown bin at a time when we are actively encouraged to recycle.

The council gets revenue from the compost generated from the bin contents so such a large increase should not be necessary.

We are always hearing from the council about shortfalls needing to be made up from the town residents to balance the books, but maybe the way forward would be not to waste our money in the first place.

We had Mary Portas here some time ago to give suggestions as to how we could make our town better. How much was her fee and what did she achieve. Not much in my view.

We have the so-called “artwork” about the shops in Bedford Square, costing quite a bit, I am sure. How are we to understand this waste of money when we have poor service in the town.

The Sure Start centre is under threat, a service which is vital to a lot of people, not many good quality shops in the centre and Market Street which has shops opening and closing within a short period of time due to the high rents the council serve on them.

It would be better to charge slightly better rents to have shops open than to have shops empty and no revenue coming in from them at all. It is not rocket science.

Also the roads and pavements are in a dreadful state all over the town. Every now and then we get maybe four or five workmen filling in each hole in the road for it be dislodged within a very short period of time.

Doing the job properly in the first place would surely save money.

I hope quite a few people agree with me that the council needs to get its act together and spend our money wisely. Roger Osbourne