Would the Gove plan have sting in its tail?

IT’S a shame Derbyshire Dales District Council wasn’t open last week. We had a few important questions to ask.

We’d like to ask why the travellers are still on their land at the leisure centre.

And we’d also like to ask how they’ll respond to the new government waste policy.

There’s a lot of ifs and buts. The new Resources and

Waste Strategy is just a policy document, published at a time of increasing political uncertainty. It sets out what Michael Gove wants to see happen – not what he’s about to do.

That said, it’s going to be interesting to see what the council thinks about the ideas and how it might affect their recent unanimous decision to implement garden waste charges.

If a decision is eventually reached to follow Mr Gove’s wishes and to scrap charges for green bin collections, would this be good news – or might there be a sting in the tail?

The council also decided, when it backed garden waste charges, to follow public wishes and to keep black bin waste collections fortnightly. It had mooted an unpopular three- or four-weekly cycle to cut costs.

Given this waste review was all about saving money, and the fact there might no longer be a saving from cutting free garden waste collections, could this now put our black bin services back in the line of fire?

Savings still have to be made. It was spelled out very clearly that the service cannot carry on as it is now. What, we wonder would be the next thing to give way?

Obviously, without input from Derbyshire Dales District Council we can only speculate this week.

And any reversal of the decisions made in November would have to go back to councillors and be subject to the usual procedures.

But it does make one wonder.