Durham’s Labour council has come up with another idea to save money – A GARDEN TAX!!!
Not impressed with this when there is so much money being wasted and nearly £100m in reserves. My press release below:
Durham County Council, with nearly £100m in reserves is to launch an assault on hard working families. The Council will force families to pay a charge for the collection of garden waste, which up to now has been provided as part of residents council tax payments. Anyone not having a garden waste bin has been entitled to get bags of garden waste collected on request for free as well.
Now the Council, which despite increasing its reserves, says it is cash strapped, wants to charge residents £20 for the service. The garden waste collection service currently provides 16 free fortnightly collections for more than 150,000 households between April and November. introducing a charge means that the service would be substantially funded by those using the service and according to the council would save it £933,000.
Councillor Mark Wilkes (Framwellgate and Newton Hall) wants to know why Labour did not include this in their election manifesto before the May elections. He branded the charge a Garden Tax which will hit the lowest paid the hardest. He also believes the savings are an illusion as many residents will start to use their general waste bin for garden waste massively increasing council landfill and disposal charges.
Cllr Wilkes says “People are paying more in this county for council tax than in most parts of the country. Labour doubled council tax when in government. The Coalition has frozen council tax for four years, giving the Council the money to cover for inflation. Now Labour has found a way to fleece Durham residents. This will hit low and middle income families and many will simply not pay it. How much more does Labour think it can charge people. After messing up the economy, it now wants to mess up our housing estates too. This will be a disincentive to keep areas tidy. In some areas this is already a problem. This policy will make things even worse.!”
Councillor Wilkes continued “People have been asking for a long time what they are paying council for. We already know about clothing allowances and Library cuts, now Labour wants to tax our gardens. Labour is simply not considering the repercussions of this proposal.
The Councillor also believes that the cost of collecting the charge will significantly reduce the savings, much like the introduction of the charge for collection of bulky waste a few years ago. This has seen many housing estates plagued with sofas, and furniture in gardens as well as flytipping.
Durham’s Cabinet will approve the report for consultation next week. Lib Dem councillors will oppose the policy.
Councillor Wilkes has suggested that scrapping the position of Chief Executive would save over £300,000 and the council should do this before any cuts to services.
Cllr Wilkes said “The council is paying out over a quarter of a million pounds to employ one person, why not cut this so people don’t have to stop cutting their hedges.”