Experimental skip scheme is not a load of old rubbish

Few would deny that something has to be done to halt the tide of fly-tipped rubbish blighting our communities. Without doubt Gosport Borough Council’s latest scheme to provide free skips for residents has its faults, but it has to be worth a try. Nothing ventured, nothing gained and all that.

What is clear is that we cannot go on as we are – a supposedly civilised country with a green agenda at its very heart which seemingly does little to prevent some of its residents dumping their waste in our towns and our countryside.

Those of us who have been unfortunate enough to stumble, literally, over mounds of this detritus, will have been sickened by the selfishness and criminality of our fellow humans.

So the new Lib Dem administration at Gosport wants to try to do something about it by providing free skips at three locations across the borough. They are for people to dump household rubbish, will be delivered weekly and cost an estimated £45,570 a year.

Council leader Peter Chegwyn, said: ‘Anything that takes more rubbish away without it being dumped in backways or wasteland or public playgrounds as currently happens, has to be a good thing.’

Yes, he is right, but we all know what’s going to happen.

In the dead of night a white van will draw up and its cargo of trade waste will be unloaded, filling the skip to overflowing.

The next day residents, who quite legitimately have rubbish to ditch, will find the skip full and leave their load outside the skip – flytipping.

And what happens when word gets around and people from neighbouring council areas start flocking to these new sites?

But, as we say, if these three venues can be policed and monitored with CCTV, the trial has got to be worth a go and not be deemed a load of old rubbish – yet.