Birmingham’s wheelie bin bid completely out-of-sync with other Council bids

Birmingham’s wheelie bin bid completely out-of-sync with other Council bids

Readers of my blog will be aware that I have been very critical of Birmingham City Council’s £28.5million bid for government money to impose 3 wheelie per household for every house in Birmingham.

I’ve been critical of the underhand way that the new Labour administration is secretly bidding for these wheelie bins without prior consultation with residents as to whether they support this proposal. I’m not against wheelie bins per se, but I calculate that 50% of houses in Birmingham are not suitable for wheelie bins.

In addition I have been critical of the Labour administration’s abandoning the previous Conservative-Lib Dem administration’s bid for the introduction of weekly food waste collections in 2013, plus increasing the frequency of recycling collections from fortnightly to weekly.

Numerous Labour Councillors, most notably Councillor John O’Shea (Labour, Acocks Green) have claimed that the reason the Labour administration abandoned the food recycling scheme was because the government was unlikely to fund food recycling. He has repeatedly made this claim on the internet, including in an interview on the Adrian Goldberg show on Radio WM. He has provided the most tenuous of evidence to support this claim, despite the government’s own documentation clearly stating they would fund food waste recycling.

May I also add that the government own information does not even hint that they would fund the introduction of wheelie bins.

Now that the government deadline for bids to be submitted has passed, the dust is now settling on what other Councils have bid for. From my own google search, I have produced the list below. The thing that immediately jumps out is that most of the Council’s have bid for the introduction of food waste recycling. None have bid for the introduction of wheelie bins

Either Councillor John O’Shea, Councillor James McKay and the Birmingham Labour administration have brilliantly outmanoeuvred every single Council in the country and will brilliantly grab £28.5million from a £250million pot. OR they have just submitted the most disastrous and bonkers bid ever from Birmingham City Council for government money.

The following is what I’ve been able to discover that other Councils have bid for.

Blaby - £2.3 million capital to change waste collection fleet from single material to split bodies

Brent – introduction of food waste collection

Colchester – introduction of food waste collection

Coventry – introduction of a recycling reward points

East Cambridge - increase the recycling collections for food and dry recyclate from fortnightly to weekly

Eastleigh – Bid to fund an anaerobic digestion plant that will digest food waste

Gateshead – introduction of food waste collection

Havering, London - introduction of ‘green reward scheme’

Herefordshire – introduction of food waste collection

Leeds – introduction of food waste collection, plus introduction of fortnight green waste collection

Lewes – introduction of food waste collection

Medway – increase the recycling collections for food and dry recyclate from fortnightly to weekly

Northampton – introduction of food waste collection

Norwich – expansion of food waste collection service, plus door-to-door campaign to encourage recycling

Oadby and Wigston, Leicestershire - introduction of food waste collection, plus introduction of ‘residents composting reward scheme’

Plymouth - £4 million capital to finance a Multi-Recycling Facility that will sort out collected glass, metal and plastics

Redbridge, London – introduction of mattress collection service and weekly green waste collection

Ribble Valley – purchase of two refuse vehicle specifically for recycling collection; free additional wheelie bins for green waste collection on request;

Sandwell – introduction of battery collection, nappy collection, waste electrics

Sefton – introduce cardboard and plastics recycling scheme

Spalding – introduction of electric powered refuse collection vehicles, plus free black sacks to residents and recycling reward scheme.

Stoke-on-Trent - increase the recycling collections for dry recyclate from fortnightly to weekly

Surrey – introduction of a free weekly collection of nappies