Comfortably in the top three topics in doorstep conversation with residents will be recycling. The chat normally centres around their disbelief regarding the lack of facilities compared to the rest of the country given we are a “green” city. My response normally takes seconds in which I describe the awful 25-year PFI deal signed by the Labour administration in 2003 and extended another five years by the following Conservative leadership, a deal that Greens were against from the get-go.
Green councillors stood side by side with campaigners – one protester even dressed as the Grim Reaper to symbolise the potentially deadly effects of the gases produced by burning rubbish. There were cries of “shame” from the public balcony when Labour and Tories rubber stamped the plans. We opposed this not just because we knew that the world of recycling would shift to include products not used at the time but also the eye-watering cost to the city.
Payments totalling £124 million have been made since 2003 and in 2018-2019 alone the cost to BHCC was £12 million. Green colleagues also warned Labour and Tory councillors that this deal would flat line our recycling rates for the duration of the contract. Even those who supported it admitted rates would be expected to hover at “27 per cent by 2006 and would meet the 30 per cent Government target by 2006/7”.
That’s exactly where we have remained ever since. In February’s Strategy and Finance Committee (ah committees, a place whe.