The leader of Lincolnshire County Council has accused South Holland District Council of making queues longer at Spalding tip due to its lack of green waste policy.
Coun Martin Hill made the comments at the county council’s Executive last week as the authority looked at the future of its waste recycling site which the meeting heard had received a large number of complaints after a move to a booking system in a bid to make it more COVID-19 safe.
There have been accusations it has led to more fly-tipping, something the county council refutes, but it was also stated the booking system had removed queues at sites which had previously particularly been a problem at West Marsh Road.
“I’m aware Spalding is one of the places where it’s bad,” Coun Hill said, claiming the reason was “because of the lack of cooperation from the district council who are not providing a comprehensive green waste system.”
South Holland had the worst recycling rate in the county of 27 per cent when it signed up to the Joint Municipal Waste Management Strategy in January 2019.
While Lincolnshire County Council oversee the tips, waste collection falls on South Holland District Council.
A spokesman responding to Coun Hill’s claims said: “South Holland’s garden waste service has grown quickly since it launched in 2016, with around 8,000 households across the district now taking part in the scheme.
“It has continued to expand significantly over the past 12 months, with all residents who were part of the register of interest prior to this year offered the chance to join. As a result over 2,500 new subscribers have signed up and we will be continuing to roll out to even more households during the remainder of 2021.”
In total the county council received 282 complaints about the service in the last year compared to five in the previous 12 months.
The issue of whether the lack of access to tips had been a reason for the increase in fly-tipping was also raised.
The county council’s assistant director for communities Nicole Hilton told the meeting this didn’t appear to be the case as the increase in fly-tipping was 881 tonnes while the decrease in waste taken to the tips was 28,000.
“It’s quite hard to correlate that those two are intrinsically linked,” she said. “I’m not convinced that those people who pack their van or lorry up and drop their waste on land or in a car park don’t do so because they’ve been unable to access the booking systems online.
“We have surplus appointments available. We’ve rarely been at capacity.”
She also told the meeting the booking system was introduced to open centres quickly while still being safe following what she described as “ambiguous and unclear guidance from government.”
