Time for a return to the business of the bins?

Back in the days of skiffle bands and Lonnie Donegan, when dustmen wore gorblimey trousers and lived in council flats, they would inevitably have been employed by same local authority they paid rent to.

Privatisation of many industries and public sector facilities,was, of course a central pillar of Margaret Thatcher’s government throughout the 1980s, and refuse collection was not immune.

Steel, railways, airports, aerospace, and public utilities including gas, electricity, telecoms and water all became the province of private operators. That all turned out fine, didn’t it?

Private refuse firms proliferated and have prospered on the basis of the one thing the councils never considered when the crews came round to empty your bins once a week: Making a profit.

But town halls leapt at the chance to off load this cumbersome service. No longer would they have to employ large numbers of surly binmen. Nor would they have to run and maintain fleets of expensive dustcarts.

It would be someone else’s problem. For a fee, which would include a healthy profit margin for the operating company, the bins would get emptied and nobody, after a while at least, would notice the difference.

But now the wheel seems to have turned full circle.

With contracts up for renewal, Portsmouth City Council is considering whether to take refuse services back under its own control. Times have changed in the 40-odd years the service has been contracted out. Recycling of waste has come to the fore, and where there is muck there is brass. Recycling of many things from can sand bottles, to old cooking oil and electronics can be lucrative income streams for a waste operator.

The issue is said to be finely balanced, but if it could benefit residents in anyway, surely the council should go back into the bin business?