From October 1st the Household Waste sites in the County will be closing at 3.30pm. Given the continued queues and the risk of a significant increase in fly tipping and other problems, it seems mad to be operating with regular opening times. Sunset is currently 18:41. To close at 3.30pm makes no sense, even allowing for the management to do the necessary things after closing.

Indeed for most sites, especially given that new LED lighting need not cause wider light pollution issues, we should be in the 20th Century with sufficient site lighting to operate later.

With the Covid queuing, its likely the site queues will close well before 3.30, so the real closing time will be even earlier.

The extra cost of dealing with all the knock on effects of these sites operating at reduced capacity, including clearing up fly tipping and dealing with other problems could to an extent be reduced by simply extending household waste opening times.

I’ve tried behind the scenes to get some movement on this, today I copied in all councillors to my suggestions, hopefully some commen sense will prevail.