Whitehall plans for new bin taxes will mean surge in fly-tipping
New rubbish taxes will harm the environment warns Andrew Percy

The Labour Government’s plans to impose Euro-style taxes for the collection of household rubbish, on top of council tax, were slammed this week as Andrew Percy warned of a massive surge in fly-tipping. With the Whitehall ‘consultation’ on the new tax scheme having now closed, the small print of the Government’s own 228-page research reveals the new taxes will almost double the level of fly-tipping in England.

·The Government’s own research estimates that bin taxes will lead to an additional 155,000 tonnes of fly-tipping a year across England. This would be equivalent to an average of 440 tonnes of rubbish dumped across our area.
·The taxes will almost double the amount that town halls currently spend on cleaning up fly-tipping. Last year, East Riding Council had to deal with 1363 number of fly-tipping incidents.
·Illegal dumping includes household waste being placed in neighbour’s bins, in street litter bins, in next door councils, dumping waste at work, and fly-tipping.

Research by the Countryside Alliance has found that black bags full of domestic rubbish already account for 63 per cent of all fly-tipping; yet just one in every 100 fly-tippers is actually prosecuted.

Bin taxes have already been introduced in the Republic of Ireland where they have caused a surge in fly-tipping; families who do not or cannot pay the bin taxes have their rubbish collections stopped. The Keep Britain Tidy campaign has warned that bin taxes will lead to "people simply dumping their garbage illegally in a bid to avoid paying up".

Andrew said:
“In the last few years, fly-tipping has become endemic. Yet Whitehall plans for new taxes on family homes will make it even worse. We all want to increase the level of recycling, but bin taxes will harm the local environment by leading to a surge in illegal dumping and backyard burning.

“Whether they can’t pay or won’t pay, I fear some irresponsible people will dump instead.The Government also needs to understand that for large families it can be a real challenge keeping rubbish down to a minimum. And no-one believes that council taxes would fall if bin taxes were introduced. Bin taxes aren’t a green tax – they’re yet another stealth tax by another name.

The Keep Britain Tidy Campaign has warned, “the so-called, ‘pay as you throw’ scheme – which involves placing micro chips in bins to asses the amount of rubbish each home creates – may result in people simply dumping their garbage illegally in a bid to avoid paying up’.

We need the Government to listen to these concerns and to understand that, whilst we all want to increase recycling, big brother style micro-chips in our bins is not the way. Much more could be achieved if the Government stopped its under-funding of the East Riding and North Lincolnshire Councils and provided a fair grant which would allow the Council to develop its recycling facilities further.”

Massive Response To Flood Petition

Hundreds of local residents have taken the opportunity to let the Environment Agency know their views of the controversial River Aire Flood Catchment Plan.

Andrew Percy explains, “As soon as we became aware of this plan Cllr Caroline Fox, Cllr Gordon Megson and myself decided to deliver a newsletter to every house in the affected area to let residents know about the Environment Agency’s proposals to increase flooding locally. On the bottom of our newsletter we asked residents who were concerned to fill in a tear-off slip objecting to the proposal. We also asked residents to include any additional objection letters they wanted us to pass on to the Environment Agency.

I am delighted to say that we have already received about 250 replies from local residents, and with replies coming in almost every day, we expect this figure to increase. Many residents also took the opportunity to include additional letters which I shall be passing onto the Environment Agency when we meet with them on August 29th in Selby.

This huge response clearly shows how concerned local residents are about this proposal and I am delighted that we have been able to ensure that people have had a real opportunity to comment on the plan. Many residents expressed concern that the first they heard about the proposal was via the local newspapers and our newsletter. There is clearly a lesson here for Government Quangos such as the Environment Agency; which after all wield a great deal of power over our lives.

We now need more detail from the Environment Agency on what exactly they propose to do locally. The plan as it presently stands is very light on detail which explains why local people are so concerned. That is why I hope the meeting on August 29th will ensure that more detail is forthcoming and hopefully this will help to alleviate some of our concerns.”

Fire service regionalisation will undermine flood & emergency response

Local Tri-Service Centres could do more to improve civil resilience

Andrew Percy warned today that the Government’s plan to regionalise the fire service could undermine the effectiveness of the emergency services as a whole in tackling future flood risks and other unforeseen events.

Under Labour’s ongoing regionalisation plans, the local fire control room for Humberside is due to be moved to Wakefield, covering a population of nearly 5 million people and an area of nearly 6,000 square miles (15,408 square km). Local knowledge and expertise will be lost.

Areas which currently have Tri-Service Centres (where the fire, ambulance and police are in one local command centre) will have the fire element taken away. A cross-party Committee of MPs warned last year that combined control rooms for the emergency services would do more to increase resilience than sprawling, regional fire control rooms.

Andrew said:
“The Government’s expensive plans for the regionalisation of the fire control services are flawed. I fear it could actually undermine the effectiveness of the emergency services in tackling disasters like floods – where co-operation between the local council, fire, police and ambulance services is essential. When I met with representatives of the Humberside Brigade recently, at a meeting to discuss the response to flooding in the East Riding, they explained that the move to regional control would mean a loss of local control over the resources of the Humberside Brigade. For example, if we saw a repeat of the recent flooding, resources from the Humberside Force could be despatched anywhere in the country without any local veto by our Chief Officer. That could leave our area exposed to risks.”

Haltemprice and Howden MP David Davis added, “Local Tri-Service Centres could do far more to improve resilience than creating a distant call centre in Wakefield covering all of Yorkshire. The arbitrary government office regions are too distant and too big. These proposals prove that the Government’s talk of localism and local accountability is nothing more than clever spin.”