CASTLE POINT BOROUGH COUNCIL’s opposition leader, Dave Blackwell, shifted uncomfortably in his high chair as he opened the Overview and Scrutiny Committee’s meeting, last Thursday evening, in the Council chamber.
His committee had called-in the Cabinet’s decision to introduce weekly collections of food waste, using specially designed caddies, and confine the borough’s non-recyclable waste to fortnightly collections.
Councillors Norman Ladzrie (Conservative, St James); Martin Tucker (Canvey Island Independent Party, Canvey Island North); and Andy Cole (Conservative, St George’s) had been concerned that the Cabinet’s decision would lead to health problems from not collecting nappy and surgical waste on a weekly basis, which is currently the case.
In order to challenge Cabinet’s decision, the committee needed to provide evidence to support their case. If successful, the matter could then be referred back to Cabinet for review – or passed to full Council.
Blackwell’s uncomfortable posterior signalled the fact that the next 90 minutes would be devoted to members voicing their personal opinions over the way the Council had conducted its consultation exercise; presenting personal observations that not all residents sorted their household waste in accordance with the rules; complain that no Borough trial of the new scheme had been undertaken; and suggest that the investment in new caddies would be a waste of money if the scheme proved unsuccessful.
Martin Tucker, whose own party knows something of saving residents money in its running of Canvey Island’s Town Council, would also object to residents being forced to purchase bio-degradable bin liners for the new caddies – despite being informed that old newspaper could be used just as effectively as that £6 annual supermarket cost when the Welcome Pack’s original supply had run out.
The issue of supporting proof for these claims would not be addressed.
It became evident early on that the meeting was not sticking to the issues for which it had been called. As Jeff Stanley (Conservative, Boyce) was to remark towards the end of the question and answer round: ‘I thought we were here to question the process and outcome of the Cabinet’s decision.’ He then followed by openly declaring his own thoughts in arriving at the decision he did; but it seemed that everyone else was out of breath.
It was left to Maryse Isles (Conservative, Cedar Hall) to ask if residents would be fined if they failed to sort their waste appropriately.
Education, it was explained, would be better employed to remedy that problem; but Council would reserve its judgement in the event that it incurred significant extra costs due to people putting their rubbish into the wrong container.
Blackwell then broke the silence by deciding to ask his own question, regarding the use of warning stickers, placed on bins by waste collectors in other areas, to advise those whom had placed their rubbish in the wrong container that they should not do so – and that that was the reason their waste had not been collected.
Officers replied that was already the case. But, unlike Norman Ladzrie (who, when told that his split-bag observations had been similarly remedied by the Waste Department some 6-months earlier, then went on to discuss that old situation in some detail) Blackwell decided to sum-up.
He asked first for members’ recommendations.
Ladzrie proposed that the matter should be passed to full Council.
Blackwell then asked for reasons. ‘Lack of consultation?’ he suggested.
Tucker immediately seconded. ‘No consultation,’ and ‘no trial,’ he confirmed.
The whole process was ‘flawed,’ put in Bill Dick (Conservative, St Peters), who had been standing in for Andy Cole while he was in hospital.
Blackwell then asked members’ for their evidence – to which there was an awkward silence. He must have been dreading this moment; because throughout the last hour and a half, no proof of the rebelling members’ claims had been put forward.
The only evidence that had been presented to the committee, regarding the claims by members that two weeks was too long to wait for a smelly nappy collection, was introduced by officers – in the form of a black bag - full of used baby nappies, which had been prepared two weeks earlier, and which had been placed in the audience that night.
Members had been invited to smell it.
It had been the high-spot of the evening; but it was now to degenerate into a farce.
Pressed to provide hard evidence for the Cabinet having arrived at its decision incorrectly or without due process, it fell upon Barry Dixie (Canvey Island Independent Party, Canvey Winter Gardens) to point-out the obvious facts.
Members had no clear evidence with which to disagree with Cabinet, and, if they wished to pass back, or send similar decisions to full Council without any evidence in future, the Council’s Constitution would need to be changed.
(The current Constitution had, of course, been agreed by full Council).
Dixie moved to take no action.
Blackwell seconded – and used his casting vote to pass the resolution when the majority abstained. He concluded that his committee would: ‘need to look at the Constitution at a later date.’
‘Where would we be without a strong opposition,’ huh, Dave?..
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