Tuesday, March 15, 2011

Money spent up, recycling down: another Lib Dem failure

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So much for the Lib Dem 'plan' to increase Bristol's recycling rate to 50%. They banged on about this so much (see policy six in their 'six to fix') but have not delivered - and it looks like there are lessons to learn for all who want higher recycling rates about how to get larger numbers of the public onside.

BRISTOL City Council spent £45,000 hiring "waste doctors" to encourage more people to recycle but they appear to have had the opposite effect.

The "Recycling For All" pilot scheme was launched last September with two officers monitoring the rubbish produced by 3,275 homes in the city.

But rather than improve recycling rates the statistics show fewer people recycled their food, bottles and papers after the pilot than before.

Recycling For All was one of four projects the waste doctors were involved in.

If they found people were not recycling, the officers would send letters advising them how they could.

They also had the power to issue a £75 fixed penalty fine or begin court proceedings that could result in fines of up to £1,000 if people continued to refuse to recycle.

The idea was to drive Bristol's already impressive recycling rate of 39 per cent up – one of the highest in the country – even further.

The council had hoped a successful pilot could be expanded across the city, pushing the recycling rate up to 50 per cent.

But far from improving performance, results from the pilot show recycling rates dropped by an average of 10 per cent – and in some parts of the city by as much as 30 per cent...

Green spaces sell-off? Bristol City Council has no Plan B

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What sort of environmental decision making is it that does not properly consider - and in fact reconsider - all the options available, planning for a range of situations? Very poor quality, irrational, unsystematic and unsystemic - in short rubbish! Even on its own money raising terms the green spaces flog off favoured by Lib Dem, Labour and Tory Councillors alike is failing as income expected is now only a quarter of that originally envisaged. Cllr Gary Hopkins high handed, dismissive tone is again clear in the Post report on this though. Pity this man is not at the end of his 4 yr term yet - resign and put yourself up for re-election this May Gary and see how you get on!

BRISTOL City Council has never looked at ways of paying for the £87 million parks improvement plan that didn't involve selling off green spaces, it has been revealed.

The authority has always maintained that disposing of up to 64 sites across the city was the only way that enough money could be raised to pay for improvements in up to 200 others.

But it turns out that in the last five years of the Parks Green Spaces Strategy (PGSS), the council has never costed or even considered a plan that doesn't involve land sales.

The original funding for the improvement plan was £41 million from land sales; £21 million of grant funding; £15 million of money from developers and £10 million from the council parks budget. Since these 2006 estimates, the council has dropped the amount it expects to raise from selling land from £41 million to £11 million...

Bristol Green spaces Bristol City Council Liberal Democrats