Labour slammed for “backwards step” in recycling ideas – how do you think £40m can be saved while protecting services?

RECYCLING policies in Kirklees have been slammed as “backward” by opposition councillors.

Kirklees Council’s Labour cabinet last month axed its glass recycling collection in a bid to save £468,000.

Now the Kirklees Conservatives have attacked the Labour cabinet for presiding over a “once environmentally progressive council taking a backward step in waste recycling initiatives”.

At Wednesday’s full council meeting Tory leader Clr Robert Light, inset, will table a motion calling on them to draw up a new recycling plan.

But Clr David Sheard, the Labour deputy leader, says they’ve considered every option and made the decision in the light of needing to find £40m savings over the next two years.

Clr Light’s motion says: “This council has been at the forefront of local government innovation in recycling over the last two decades under various political administrations, but there has been no positive recycling initiatives since the Conservatives introduced a seven point recycling plan, which had also had input from the Liberal Democrats, between 2006 and 2008.

“Kirklees has since stood still and been overtaken by many more environmentally progressive councils in the last three years – councils who followed the lead we once gave.

“Now Labour is withdrawing glass collections which will result in the amount of waste we recycle falling.

“At the council meeting we will call on them to introduce a new recycling plan which maintains existing waste collections and enhances household recycling, including glass, as a matter of urgency.”

Clr David Sheard said officers have considered many options, including turning to the private sector .He said: “We spent a year investigating whether the private sector could do it, but it would cost us more than £400,000.

“I’m quite happy to listen to people’s views and ideas if they have them, but over the next two years we’ve got to save £40m and decisions need to be made with that in mind.”

Clr Sheard said council officers’ time had been spent investigating a range of options before they made the decision to axe glass recycling but none proved financially viable.