Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
Liberal Democrat-run Wokingham Borough Council issued a story this week saying recycling was increasing but “we” can do better.
This is the same administration which scrapped liners for food waste caddies, despite warnings that this would deter people from recycling.
The lack of self-reflection is staggering – maybe it’s the Lib Dems that could do better, rather than residents.
As has become the habit of this administration, they like to claim credit for things done by others, while ignoring the impact of their own policies.
The Council’s press release triumphantly talks about how recycling increased from 34% a decade ago to more than half today. But you have to read most of the way through the article to realise that it was the introduction of food waste recycling by the previous Conservative administration that increased the rate of recycling to 50% by 2020.
With that in mind, a reasonable person would think that it would be unhelpful at best to make changes that would put people off recycling.
Not if you’re a Lib Dem councillor in Wokingham Borough, apparently.
In 2022, when the Lib Dem/Labour administration stopped supplying caddy liners, they promised that a “targeted communications campaign” would lead to an increase in food recycling rates, which would save the Council £350,000.
Conservative councillors told them this would be a mistake, and tried to get the Lib Dems to change their mind – but we were ignored.
Now Lib Dems admit more work is needed.
Not content with reducing a service, while hoping it will deliver better results, the Lib Dems will also be scrapping weekly bin collections. This is despite a petition pleading with the Council not to, and the administration’s own consultation saying less than a quarter of people wanted it.
The Lib Dems care so little about what you think, their response to criticism of this policy is to claim weekly bin collections will continue and to call the petition “spurious”.
They know full well that a bin lorry will still turn up at your house every week, but will only collect some of your bins, and your household waste and dry recycling will only be collected once a fortnight. The Lib Dems are trying to take residents for fools.
Of course, the stock response from the administration is that the Council has no money. Yet there is no guarantee that savings will be made by moving to fortnightly collections. Council estimates assume that residents will suddenly stop creating 3% of the waste they currently produce and recycle 13% more dry waste and 20% more food waste.
Last month, the Government announced that Wokingham Borough Council will have an increase in its core spending power by more than the national average. Our core spending power is also increasing more than any other Council in Berkshire and we will have the second highest spending power per dwelling in Berkshire, only behind Slough.
Even putting that to one side, the Conservatives proposed a plan to change the authority’s spending priorities last year so weekly waste collections could be kept. But we were ignored again.
So, we have a Lib Dem administration that wants to increase recycling yet makes it harder for people to recycle their food waste, at the same time as claiming they will cut the costs of collecting household waste by still sending the lorries round every week, but only picking up your bins every two weeks.
This is without getting into the debacle of when they tried to scrap some public bins and the emptying of others less, only to be surprised when rubbish piled up in the streets.
You deserve so much better than this. If the Conservatives are elected to run the Council in May, we will reinstate weekly bin collection and expand the recycling service. By getting more people to recycle, we will bring costs down, freeing up money for vital Council services. Under the Conservatives, your priorities will be our priorities.
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen is leader of Wokingham Conservatives and ward member for Hillside
