Garden bin £56 collection charge go ahead becomes most expensive in North West

manchestereveningnews.co.uk:

People across Cheshire East will have to pay £56 per year for green waste collection - the highest fee in the North West. The plans - approved on July 27 - to introduce the bin waste subscription charge were requested to be 'called in' at full council by Conservatives - but Cheshire East refused.

The council said the original decision to charge for green waste was made at February’s budget meeting and ‘there can be no challenge to the full council decision’.

Now, Tory councillors have slammed the decision after complaints at numerous committee meetings they had no input in the budget process because it was presented to them as a ‘fait accompli’. Try MEN Premium for FREE by clicking here for no ads, fun puzzles and brilliant new features. Conservative group leader Janet Clowes has now issued a statement saying: “The council’s refusal to re-visit this decision is based on February’s MTFS budget decision suggesting that such decisions are ‘set in stone’. “Yet we know decisions made at the same council meeting about library opening hours, have already been re-worked and local authorities, like any other business, must constantly re-model their fiscal planning to meet changing circumstances and priorities.” Cheshire East officers held a behind-closed-doors meeting last week with councillors who had requested the call-in.

Councillor Clowes said: “The debate and fiscal data provided at last week’s meeting was valuable, but it should have been available to both the environment and communities committee members and other interested councillors before the budget consultation in January when members would have been able to proactively inform policy.” Knutsford councillor Tony Dean (Con), a member of the environment and