By Cllr Pauline Jorgensen
Yet again the Liberal/Labour coalition drop another bombshell on the unsuspecting residents of Wokingham Borough.
Over the last few weeks we have seen them ignore the result of the residents’ consultation which was in favour of four yearly elections, so I suppose nothing should surprise us, but in each of the recent cases there has been no consultation at all.
First the Lib/Lab Councillors decided to scrap food caddy liners, by their own admission putting at risk the targeted increase in food waste recycling and the £350,000 annual savings that went with it. This decision was made behind closed doors and did not follow Borough decision making rules so we are bringing it to scrutiny for review.
Then they slashed the number of blue bags allocated to households for residual waste, no consultation, no apparent thought for those with children or disabilities which result in extra nappies and sanitary waste.
This was excused by the argument that it would reduce waste thrown away, as if residents create waste to fill the blue bags issued. If the desire was to reduce non-recycled waste it would have been far more effective to increase the variety of recycling collected.
Conservatives froze car parking charges to try and help hard pressed local business and residents in the aftermath of Covid. Then, having taken control, the Lib/Lab coalition doubled the car parking charges and imposed Sunday and evening charges, again no consultation at all.
Another decision which was made outside due process and called in to scrutiny.
Now having seemingly belatedly discovered the consultation tool they have launched a consultation to move to two- or three-weekly waste and wheelie bins, in this ‘consultation’ there isn’t even the option to maintain weekly waste and reject wheelie bins.
No thought again for the residents in small terraced houses who will have no choice but to store their wheelie bins on the road or on someone else’s garden.
For more than 20 years Conservatives have maintained weekly waste collections because we understand the issues a move to collections only every two or three weeks will cause many people, each year we have managed to produce a balanced budget without this ‘saving’ and we did so again for 2022/23.
We have been clear that keeping weekly waste was our policy in our election manifesto.
Did people who voted for Lib Dems and Labour or Independents realise that massive increases to car parking costs and reduction in waste services was their policy, was this mentioned in any of their leaflets?
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen is the leader of Wokingham Conservatives, and ward member for Hillside
