FROM THE CHAMBER: Doing the right thing – even if the council is not

By Cllr Andy Croy

A minuscule yet highly vulnerable group of Wokingham Borough residents receive a one-off small grant to help them live independently.

This grant value had been set at £2,000 by Wokingham Borough Council and a recent suggestion was made to raise it to £2,200. So far, so good. It was then revealed that the government’s recommended allowance for this group was £3,000.

So in one of the richest parts of the country and an area with one of the highest cost of livings outside London, the plan was to shortchange this incredibly vulnerable group by £800.

It was so very Conservative.

Luckily, some questioning by one of the newly elected Labour councillors persuaded the decision-makers to see sense and we will now follow the national guidance.

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This very small cohort of residents will probably never how they have benefited from the intervention of one Labour councillor but I am extraordinarily pleased by a demonstration, once again, of the value of having Labour councillors being able to challenge those who take decisions.

More publicly, a couple of weeks ago, councillors received a press release from the Council’s communications team that explained that at some indeterminate point in the future, both grass-cutting and litter bin emptying would be cut back to save money.

The following week, black plastic bags were placed over many litter bins.

Almost inevitably, rubbish has started to accumulate near the covered bins.

I say “almost” as what sort of person thinks it is okay to throw their rubbish on the floor if no litter bin is available? It is not acceptable. It has never been acceptable and is a particularly narcissistic form of anti-social behaviour – “I have a right to dump my rubbish in a public place”. No. No, you do not.

We can ignore the crocodile tears of Conservative councillors who behind the scenes will be unable to contain their glee at the campaigns and leaflets they will be able to produce off the back of this fiasco. They would much rather talk about the Liberal Democrat council than their own, rotten, miserly government which has not only trashed the economy but has also trashed local government finance.

What we cannot do is ignore the anger and bewilderment of residents who suddenly find what many would consider a sign of good local government, that is the provision of adequate litter bins and an adequate regime to empty them, has been whisked away.

What I cannot ignore is the appallingly bad leadership and communications from the Council on this issue.

If one is to make a change like this, one must make the effort to take people with you. Apart from one desultory press release which gave no sense at all of the timings or scale of the cuts there has been nothing. As I write I wait to hear from officers about which bins in my ward are affected and which are not. The same team has been very responsive in getting overflowing bins and related flytipping sorted as promptly as they can – but this situation should not have arisen.

For several generations we have tried to teach children and adults alike to “bin it” – to place your rubbish in a bin. There is an argument that says people should take their rubbish home and that anti-social littering should be made socially unacceptable.

I have a lot of sympathy for this view but it will take more than one press release from Wokingham Borough Council to outweigh the public information campaigns to “bin it” of the last forty years.

To finish on a positive, it has been good to see that many residents DO act in a social way – they DO take their litter home if they cannot dispose of it and they DO report overflowing bins rather than contributing to the fly-tipping.

It is possible to be both angry with the Council and to do the right thing.

Cllr Andy Croy is a Labour councillor for Bulmershe and Whitegates ward on Wokingham Borough Council