NEWS
What a load of rubbish!
There was much mutual back-patting from our elected officials
recently, when a plan by Wolverhampton Council to charge Dudley
residents £3 to use their Anchor Lane refuse tip was dropped at
the last minute.
"A deal has been done by one to one discussions between the two
lead members for the environment, Cllrs Karen Shakespeare and
Andrew Johnson", an 'extremely pleased' Councillor David Caunt
told the Dudley News. "Joint management of the tip will mean the
northern end of the borough will once again be supplied with a
facility to dump their rubbish".
A triumph for our leaders' tough negotiating stance with its
bigger neighbour? Hardly - we understand that Dudley Council have
agreed to give Wolverhampton £120,000 a year for the 'privilege'!
So we'll still be paying to use something we used to get for free,
but through our Council Tax. Not so bad for us in North Dudley of
course, because the £3 per person burden will be spread out
amongst the people of Stourbridge, Halesowen etc., who will never
have cause to use the service. A whiff of party politics in this
decision, perhaps?
This cross border charging is not prevalent across the country -
in fact it appears that Dudley is more or less unique in caving in
to its colleagues across the divide. Strange, when one considers
that 1500 Wolverhampton school children use Dudley schools...
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