Pressure mounts on Bradford council to drop waste permit plan

Bradford Council brought in the identity scheme to stop non-Bradford residents using its tips.

It says residents from other areas have been using Bradford’s facilities and a permit scheme will save £160,000 a year.

The council will start to enforce the new rules from June.

But yesterday a senior councillor was forced to apologise for sending out inaccurate information about the permit scheme.

A form sent to homes appeared to suggest that people could face prosecution for taking a neighbour’s rubbish to the tip.

The form wrongly stated that a waste carriers’ licence would be needed for those moving someone else’s waste.

The scheme was yesterday branded a “monumental cock-up” by Tory councillor Simon Cooke.

His Bingley Rural ward colleague, Councillor Mike Ellis, called for the scheme to be dropped.

He said it was time for neighbouring councils to co-operate and for some “give and take”.

“There needs to be some sort of agreement between each of the West Yorkshire authorities.”

Councillor Andrew Thornton, the council’s executive member for environment, said: “The information on the forms and the roll out of this scheme was not satisfactory and it is clear that we have lessons to learn. We apologise for this and have taken steps to rectify this.”

“Surveys of visitors have identified a significant number of visits from residents of neighbouring authorities. The introduction of a permit scheme is aimed at ensuring that our household waste recycling centres are easily accessible to Bradford residents whilst, as far as is practicable, excluding visitors from neighbouring authorities and thereby saving the associated cost of disposal of waste from outside the district.”

Lib Dems have branded the scheme “costly control-freakery”.