Victims of recycle ‘tax’

Published: 23 December, 2010

• IN Labour’s manifesto in May the party pledged: “We will ensure that environmental considerations are taken into account in every decision we make.” But in documents released last week Labour said it intended to “delete the recycling and waste minimisation team” and “reduce environment protection enforcement”.

Now, I’d like to know how, with reference to the new recycling tax, it intends to teach residents how to recycle before they move to the fining process, once they’ve laid off the staff who would be doing the teaching? Without these essential council officers, this really is nothing more than a Labour stealth tax.

At the overview committee hearing, Labour councillor Paul Smith said he would “target areas which have no excuse to not recycle fully”. So this is a middle-class stealth tax, aimed at those who are unable to recycle. 

Those most at risk are residents in blocks of flats and the standard Victorian tenements (divided into two or three flats each). Thus the people I fear will be hit by the tax are the elderly, disabled, anyone who shares recycling facilities and anyone who lives above a shop and thus has no space for recycling facilities.

 The council is very fond of blaming everything on the Coalition government but this is a new tax it has come up with, entirely independently, since its election in May. 

Sooner or later Labour councillors are going to have to start explaining themselves and their decisions. In the meantime it looks like we’ll all be paying a lot more local tax.

CLLR ARTHUR GRAVES
Lib Dem, Junction ward