Another fine mess from Defra

Julian Kirby

11 April 2011

Yesterday Defra announced it will ban councils from fining people for all but the most serious of waste crimes.

If a council is overzealous with its bin fines it should be reprimanded, no doubt about that, though the councils concerned say such accusations are exaggerated. But is a blanket ban on waste fines really the answer?

I remember few years ago there was a massive hoo-ha about councils setting parking fine targets for their traffic wardens. Such behaviour is unscrupulous and unfair, but did the Government ban parking fines as a result? No. So what's the difference between parking and rubbish?

The difference is politics. Everyone knows, though they might not like it, that parking fines do a good job. They're a deterrent against bad parking, and reduce congestion by keeping streets open and accessible. So, though the story sparked some populist babble and anti-council rhetoric from certain politicians, it didn't go any further than that.

But with rubbish and recycling, the likes of Pickles and Spellman see an easy opportunity to look tough and decisive in defence of middle England, attacking councils when they should be supporting them. They think the public are all so stupid they'll join in the council-bashing frenzy, happy the Government is on their side against 'the bin police'.

The public aren't so stupid. They understand recycling saves precious resources, and are increasingly aware that it's much cheaper than landfilling or incinerating rubbish instead. And they realise now more than ever that that  means there's more of their council tax money left over to pay for the important stuff like care homes and libraries. So they want to do the right thing, and they don't see why their efforts at doing the right thing should be ruined by a selfish minority that repeatedly refuses to recycle at all.

And councils aren't stupid either, which is why they are busy ignoring Pickles' relentless bullying for them to return to weekly black-bag rubbish collections. They know alternate weekly collections are perfectly hygienic and popular so long as they're accompanied by weekly food waste collections. And that they're much cheaper and boost recycling, which saves even more money. In fact if all English councils returned to weekly bin collections it would cost more than half a billion pounds and drop England's recycling rate by several per cent.

It's a pretty sorry government that bangs on about localism but relentlessly removes the rights of councils to decide for themselves how best to run their rubbish and recycling services. Or that claims to be the "greenest government ever" but takes the side of the wasteful few who can't be bothered to recycle, rather than the conscientious majority that protect the environment and deliver a shot in the arm to the economy by cutting waste and recycling more.

It's not fines that are the problem, unless you're talking about the fine mess the Government seems determined to make of English waste policy.