Council in chaos over rubbish collections

5:11pm Thursday 24th July 2008

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Kingston Conservatives have come out fighting after the leader of Liberal Democrats accused them of misleading voters over changes to rubbish collections in the borough.

The Conservatives presented a 5,500 strong petition to the council on July 15 against Kingston Council’s plans to introduce weekly recycling collections and fortnightly residual rubbish collections.

However, at the executive meeting on July 22, Kingston Council leader Derek Osbourne slammed the petition’s wording which asked people to show their opposition to a new “fortnightly” collection scheme.

“If I were a resident who was asked to sign your petition without the true facts about what will be collected weekly I would have signed up!

“You have made people believe that they will have everything collected once a fortnight, your petition is a fraud on the electorate.”

The council said effectively residents will still have a weekly collection service because far more materials can now be recycled and residual landfill waste, which will be collected fortnightly, will be minimal.

Conservative leader Howard Jones hit back and accused the Lib Dems of “avoiding the real issue”.

“They will stop weekly collections of rubbish from the majority of households in the borough.

“We fought the last election on a proposal to extend the fortnightly recycling collections to weekly and have never deviated from that position.

“We have always believed that the remaining rubbish should be collected weekly and so do the people who signed our petition.

“Nobody forced people to sign the petition, they did it of their own free will.”

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