Hurrah, it looks like Durham Council has listened for once. Their plan to charge residents to collect their bins has been dropped for the at least twelve months, so millions of pounds are kept in the local economy for another year. We had pressed hard behind the scene and in public against this proposal and it appears a huge number of residents also raised concerns. Thankfully this time at least Labour have been sufficiently lambasted to stop slapping this charge on to hardworking Durham residents. Now we just need them to listen to us on the council tax freeze too. The government is offering the council money for a 1% increase and we have identified ways to find additional funds (see below story).