CONSERVATIVES BLOCK LIB DEM PROPOSAL TO RESOLVE BIN PROBLEMS

At a Council meeting on Thursday North Herts Conservative councillors voted down a proposal from the Liberal Democrats that the leader of the council and the executive member for waste and recycling should meet senior managers from Urbaser to solve the problems with the bin service. They also rejected a call for them to prepare a contingency plan to deal with the situation if Urbaser fails to improve.

Councillor Weeks, the executive member for waste told the meeting that "most of the service is operating in a satisfactory manner" and that he and the leader are already doing what is required to solve the remaining problems.

Liberal Democrat waste spokesperson Councillor Lisa Nash said, "I can't believe that we are still here after nearly 4 months. We have been littered with false promises about more staff being put onto the telephones and more bin rounds but nothing has changed. The service is unacceptable and the council's leaders need to do something about it"

Councillor Steve Jarvis, who proposed the motion added, "To the many people across the district who repeatedly don't have their bins emptied and who spend up to half an hour on the phone trying to report this it will be clear that the service is not satisfactory. If the leader of the council and the executive member are really doing all they can to fix these problems it is clearly not good enough.

"If they can't do better than this they should resign so they can be replaced with somebody who can get our bins emptied properly."