Bins petition sparks political row in Wiltshire
Back in March, a cross-party group of Calne-based Conservative and Reform UK county and town councillors launched the county-wide Say No to 3-Weekly Bins campaign
A petition opposing changes to Wiltshire bin collections has sparked a political row.
Back in March, a cross-party group of Calne-based Conservative and Reform UK county and town councillors launched the county-wide Say No to 3-Weekly Bins campaign.
The campaign opposes Wiltshire Council’s plans to reduce the collection of residual household waste from once a fortnight to once every three weeks from 2027.
The petition of 4,000 signatures – 3,200 of which were signed by residents of Wiltshire – was presented to a meeting of Wiltshire Council on Tuesday (19 May).
Campaign organiser and Wiltshire Councillor Augusta Urquhart-Nicholls (Calne Chilvester & Abberd, Reform UK) said the number of Wiltshire residents who signed the petition had far outnumbered those who took part in an official council consultation over the Our Wiltshire strategy plan.
“The Our Wiltshire consultation received around 1,000 responses, which (council leader) Ian Thorn said was the largest consultation in terms of responses that we’ve seen for a long time,” she said.
“And then in January, Cllr Thorn said: ‘We don’t believe in fake consultation. We’re working to be a listening council, where we engage people, whether it’s good news, bad news, or something in between.’
“Well, here we are, 3,200 Wiltshire residents, asking the council to listen.
“Three times the number the leader celebrated as a triumph of engagement less than a year ago.
“My question is straightforward: Is this administration genuinely a listening council? Or does it only listen when the answer it gets is the one that it wants?”
Responding, Cllr Paul Sample, cabinet member for waste, said: “The population of Wiltshire is over 523,000. So this petition represents the views of less than 0.8 per cent of the total population.
“Nevertheless, I want to thank all of the petitioners for taking the time to share their views and engage constructively in this debate.”
He continued: “Most seem to be under the impression that this is a cut in services.
“I want to make it clear that the changes we are making are not about cutting services, but about increasing them, and that includes a significant increase in the budget.
“Under our plans, residents will receive more doorstep recycling and waste services more often than ever before.
“Alongside the move to three weekly black bin collections, Wiltshire Council will also introduce, for the first time, weekly food waste collections.
“The food waste will be sent to anaerobic digestors in the county, and turned into methane gas, and fed into the grid.
“And it will also produce high-quality fertiliser to go onto Wiltshire fields.
“There will also be new recycling collections to include plastic bags and wrappings for the very first time.
“This matters because a very large proportion of what currently goes into black bins is recyclable or compostable material.”
He said Wiltshire was lagging behind neighbouring councils in the amount of waste it recycles.
“Somerset, Dorset, and several local councils in Oxfordshire are regularly achieving recycling rates well above 50 per cent,” he said. “In Wiltshire it is 42.4 per cent.”
“Our objective is to improve recycling in Wiltshire and increase the rate of recycling to over 60 per cent.
“Too much recyclable material is still ending up in black bins and being treated as residual waste.
“Continuing with the current system unchanged, as the petitioners request, would make it much harder to improve recycling rates, reduce disposal costs, and meet future environmental expectations, set nationally through the government’s simpler recycling reforms.
“We estimate that it would cost an additional £3 million pounds over two years to go back to two-weekly residual waste collection.”
Councillors voted to note the petition. The council’s own official consultation, which can be found at https://www.wiltshire.gov.uk/consultations, ends at 5pm on June 3.