Rutland County Council leader Gale Waller writes about changes to bin collections and local government reorganisation
You may remember that some time ago Rutland’s Cabinet discussed the Government’s new requirement to collect food waste, writes Rutland County Council leader Gale Waller (Lib Dem).
Collecting food waste is important from an environmental point of view and if we all have to dispose of our food waste separately to our other waste we might think more about what we throw away.
About 40% of Rutland’s residual waste (the black bin) is food waste. This is not only poor for the environment but also for our pockets – we’ve paid for the food we throw away. However, collecting food waste will increase the cost of our waste collection contract as the cost is not just the collection of the bins but disposal of the waste collected. We get some income from recycled materials but pay significantly for residual waste.
You will recall that one option to meeting this cost would be to collect the black bins every three weeks, rather than the two weeks we have at present. A number of councils nationally already collect their residual waste on a three-weekly cycle and some are considering introducing a four-weekly cycle. Rutlanders, thanks to your efforts this year to recycle more and throw away less, we have increased our income on recycled waste and as a result can now afford to purchase smaller bins for the residual waste. With separate food waste collections there will be less residual waste.
Last week, Cabinet approved the purchase of new, smaller, residual waste bins allowing us to continue fortnightly collections of residual waste when we begin collecting food waste next year which, I am sure, will be good news to all residents of Rutland.
The process of local government reorganisation which began in earnest at the start of the year is now moving beyond its first stage. Those of you who’ve been following closely will know that national government wrote to local authorities in clearly defined areas and asked these groups of councils to bring forward reorganisation proposals. They have called these 'invitation areas' and Rutland's invitation area was Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland.
The long-awaited Government feedback on proposals from both Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland and Lincolnshire’s has been received. The feedback was sent to the authorities in the “invitation areas” which in Rutland’s case meant we only received feedback on the Leicester, Leicestershire and Rutland (LLR) submissions. In the feedback the Government has reassured us this process is about devolution of powers to strategic authorities (mayoral combined authorities like Greater Lincolnshire greaterlincolnshire-cca.gov.uk) and local government reorganisation and not about abolishing historic ceremonial counties. We will work with Government to preserve Rutland’s ceremonial status. However, the administrative boundaries of Rutland will change. Government feedback has reiterated their desire for new unitary authorities of c500k and if we deviate from that in our final proposals we will need to justify the figures we submit. The feedback has also emphasised the need to identify the savings that will be made; the greater the savings the more likely the proposal will be accepted.
The proposal Rutland worked on with Leicestershire’s districts did not include any boundary changes to Leicester City. Government feedback indicates this will not be acceptable as the city needs to be able to grow, not least to be able to accommodate their government housing targets. There is a great deal of work needed between now and November to meet government’s expectation for final proposals. In addition, Rutland will only be allowed to support one proposal and will therefore need to decide whether to support joining with LLR or Lincolnshire. Reader, you can help us make this decision. We have embarked on public engagement and need you to help us. Full details can be found on our website by visiting: www.rutland.gov.uk/devolution.
