Spring is the time of year when a County Council’s fancy turns to cut backs, savings, or economies. This year is no different. The targets for today are the HWRCs or Household Waste Recycling Centres. Known to you and I as the local tip or dump, they are placed strategically all over Kent, or rather they were, but perhaps not in the future.
Is cutting back the Household waste recycling network unfair and counterproductive?
KCC wants to close Rubbish tips in Maidstone, Dartford, Richborough and Faversham and cut the hours of others, mainly in East Kent.
There are two points at issue:
- Is it right to impose these cuts, when flytipping and care of the environment are rising up the public agenda?
- Is it fair to impose the main burden of these cuts falls on East Kent and, by doing so, is it a danger to the future wellbeing of Kent County Council as an organisation?
In its Report KCC does not explain why East Kent figures so highly in the closure programme or why West Kent is not mentioned. Within the report there is a table of data which tries to suggest that service users will not be much affected:
A map is provided to show areas within a 20 minute ‘Off peak’ drive time of a HWRC.
This is all very reassuring. The report’s mantra is only 1.1% of households will be adversely affected and anyway only off-peak periods will be cut. Almost everybody will be within a 20 minute drive and there will be a £1.5m saving, so that is OK then or perhaps not, for the following reasons:
- Kent has a population of 1.6m people (not including Medway) and therefore by their own figures 17,600 people will be affected. That is no small number.
- They refer to a 20 minute off peak drive, but when it is off peak during the day in many parts of Kent, where traffic congestion is a fact of life?
- Even if the estimates of drive time were correct, and there’s plenty of evidence to suggest they under-represent the true state of affairs, it still means a 40 minute round trip and at least 20 minutes on site. That means an hour to dispose of some waste. Are we not thereby encouraging fly tipping by those who value their time, over the bother of booking online and driving to the tip? If we value our environment should we not be expanding this service and making it easier to dispose of waste responsibly? It’s like removing litter bins within a park and then wondering why the place looks untidy.
- The table also showed that capacity would be reduced by between 18.1% and 27.8%. Is that wise when the Kent Population is rising and will rise still further as more housing developments come online. Where will the good citizens of Otterpool Park go when they wish to dispose of their waste? You cannot increase the population and cut the HWRC network, without putting pressure on the remaining network or increasing flytipping.
- According to a report issued in May 2021 “Councils across the county recorded 25,183 cases of fly-tipping in 2019/20, which is 27.8% of the total in the South East. Of these, only 0.6% received a fixed penalty charge. The national average for convictions is very low at 1.38%, so you are more likely to be struck by lightning than caught for fly-tipping. What happened when KCC closed the rubbish tips during lockdown? Anarchy was the result, and partial anarchy might be the result if the KCC closure proposals are approved.
- KCC has been here before when Richborough and Hawkinge were slated for closure in 2012. Richborough remains open today, so if it was needed then, it is needed now.
- I don’t have the data, though I have requested it, but when one waste stream is blocked or restricted, others will increase such as fly tipping and increased tonnage of collected waste; so what KCC is in fact doing is passing the burden on to the District Councils, and private landowners, who either have to pick up greater tonnages of collected waste, or clean up the land after fly tipping. It’s robbing Peter, to pay Paul.
- Finally, is this really going to save £1.5m? What will happen to the redundant sites? They will become derelict, as they are unlikely to be suitable for housing. Some sites, such as Dover, are refuse transfer sites and will remain open anyway, and therefore, how will KCC reduce labour and other operating costs? Business rates are partially remitted to KCC anyway, so the saving will not be as great as stated. In any case it is bonkers that taxpayers are paying business rates to run council services. The same cockeyed thinking used to preside with public toilets, but finally the treasury were persuaded it was counter-productive, so should the same not apply here?
Is there a clear and present danger to the longevity of KCC?
If we look at Land Use in Kent, 8.7% is what might be termed developed land, but there is a difference between the various Districts:
| 2022 | Community Service | Defence | Industry & Commerce | Minerals & Landfill | Residential | Transport & Utilities | Unknown developed use | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| England | 0.7 | 0.0 | 0.4 | 0.1 | 1.3 | 4.4 | 1.9 | 8.7 |
| Ashford | 0.4 | – | 0.2 | 0.1 | 0.7 | 3.6 | 1.4 | 6.4 |
| Canterbury | 1.2 | 0.0 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 1.6 | 4.6 | 1.7 | 9.5 |
| Dartford | 2.4 | – | 1.8 | 0.4 | 3.8 | 11.8 | 5.5 | 25.7 |
| Dover | 0.8 | 0.0 | 0.3 | 0.1 | 1.2 | 4.0 | 1.7 | 8.1 |
| Folkestone & Hythe | 0.5 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 0.2 | 1.0 | 4.6 | 1.2 | 7.7 |
| Gravesham | 2.0 | – | 0.7 | 0.0 | 2.8 | 6.9 | 3.0 | 15.3 |
| Maidstone | 0.7 | 0.0 | 0.3 | 0.0 | 1.4 | 4.6 | 2.1 | 9.1 |
| Sevenoaks | 0.8 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 0.1 | 1.2 | 4.0 | 1.6 | 7.8 |
| Swale | 0.6 | 0.0 | 0.5 | 0.0 | 1.2 | 4.5 | 2.3 | 9.0 |
| Thanet | 2.5 | – | 0.8 | 0.0 | 4.2 | 11.0 | 3.6 | 22.0 |
| Tonbridge & Malling | 1.3 | 0.0 | 0.5 | 0.2 | 1.7 | 5.7 | 2.7 | 12.2 |
| Tunbridge Wells | 1.3 | 0.0 | 0.2 | 0.0 | 1.1 | 3.8 | 1.5 | 7.9 |
| Medway Unitary Authority | 2.1 | 0.0 | 0.9 | 0.1 | 3.6 | 10.1 | 3.7 | 20.4 |
All the Districts proposed for service reductions or closure have higher intensity residential housing development. Thanet and Dartford, in particular, have three times the development of some districts in West Kent, and the differential is going to become ever more marked in future, because Thanet and Dartford are not ‘green belt’ areas.
What is therefore proposed is that areas of deprivation and intensive housing development should lose services and those in West Kent with less intensive housing should continue serenely onwards as before.
The same thinking was applied to libraries in 2018 and to children’s centres in 2022 an, of course, bus services in 2022. There is a pattern of disregard towards certain parts of the county in a systematic and somewhat callous way. I don’t know whether this is political, or just bias against certain communities. I doubt whether there is anti eastern agency at KCC, or more likely if KCC think parts of Kent are in the control of the Blob. Either way, the outcome for East Kent is always negative.
I suspect the wealthier parts of Kent do not use these facilities, nor do the KCC officials, so their destruction/reduction is not felt by those in charge. I don’t think there is any thought: everything seems to be subject to Managerialism, where people’s lives and wellbeing are treated as if there is an economic game of chess, with the people seen as the hapless pawns. For instance do we close parks, or remove benches, and litter bins, just because they do not get optimal use? No, of course not, so why apply managerialist ideas, where community values apply?
As far as the proposed closure of dumps is concerned, East Kent will be badly served. This blundering, unfair proposal, is but one of many that the long suffering residents of East Kent have had to endure. Perhaps it is time to reach back in time and to create separate East Kent and West Kent unitary councils as proposed by Redcliffe-Maud in 1969. East and West Kent are like separate entities. West Kent cleaves more to London, even though it tries to resist the metropolitan grasp, and East Kent is dominated by coastal or estuarial community issues. For some time the Districts in the West and those in the East have set different agendas. Placing Districts like Thanet and Sevenoaks together within the same regional body is not viable, as their local economies are so different.
