£1.5M BILL FOR AN ARMY OF DUSTBIN SNOOPERS

Shock troops in councils’ waste crusade

CASH-STRAPPED Scots councils are spending up to £1.5million a year on an army of waste officials to rifle through families’ bins. Local authorities have been accused of ‘Big Brother’ tactics, with officers visiting ten households a day to lecture people.

Council staff even have powers to go through people’s bins and photograph their letters in order to identify those who are deemed to have failed to recycle properly.

Families who don’t fit up to three weeks of rubbish in their wheelie bin can expect a visit from one of the 78 waste officials across the country.

But the move was attacked by Scottish Tory local authority spokesman Cameron Buchanan.

He said: ‘This is just another example of over-zealous council policies on waste and recycling.

‘Snooping on what ordinary families and individuals are throwing in their

bins is completely farcical and comes at an enormous cost to the taxpayer.

‘there’s also a certain element of george orwell’s 1984 here. do we really want the state spying on what we throw away?

‘Perhaps local authorities would be better spending this money on the things people really want – fixing roads and potholes and providing a good education system.’

local authorities are facing increasing pressure to cut down what they send to landfill, as they are taxed on every ton.

falkirk Council bosses have cut bin collections to every three weeks.

Members of east lothian Council’s waste management and recycling team are paid up to £50,000 a year, while the City of edinburgh Council employs eight temporary recycling advisers who visit households ‘identified’ by binmen as failing to recycle properly.

in the Western isles, each wheelie bin has a unique serial number, so people ‘contaminating’ them with the wrong types of rubbish can be traced to their address.

the 28 Scots councils (out of 32) that replied to a request for information said they employed 78 officials who contact households directly. using the top amounts in their pay grades, it is calculated they earn a total of up to £1,565,887 a year.

eben Wilson of taxpayer-Scotland said: ‘We are headed for a world in which everyone is told what to do by yellow jacket-wearing bureaucrats.

‘this is just creeping state intrusion and we must step back from it. it is almost totalitarian, the way in which services which we pay for through our council tax are being rationed.’

four councils answered a freedom of information request on how many households were visited in the past year.

fife Council made 3,081 visits in 2014-15, falkirk 336, east ayrshire 262 and Scottish Borders 174.

derek Crowe, a senior manager at fife Council, said: ‘We deal with any issues of bin contamination by letter and don’t need many household visits.’

gerry darroch, acting head of housing and communities at east ayrshire Council, said: ‘on an annual basis, we carry out in excess of 7.4million visits to households to service our recycling and waste containers. the number of householder visits carried out by community waste officers should be considered in this context.’

a spokesman for Scottish Borders Council said the majority of visits were due to requests from households.

falkirk Council said it was unable to respond further regarding household visits.

a spokesman for local authority umbrella group Cosla said: ‘in all honesty, this smacks of opportunistic council-bashing.’