By Carmelo Garcia – Local Democracy Reporter
Hundreds of Gloucestershire residents are calling for the “right to use the nearest tip” as people on the county’s borders have to make “unnecessarily” long trips to the household recycling centre.
Residents of Berkeley, Alkington, Ham and Stone drive up to 13 miles to use the Gloucestershire County Council tip near Horsley.
The nearest public tip is in Thornbury 6.5 miles away. Residents in the north of the Forest of Dean District in places such as Dymock and Kilcot face a similar problem.
Their nearest household recycling centres are a few miles away in Ledbury and Ross-on-Wye in Herefordshire.
But instead they have to travel more than 14 miles to their nearest site in Hempsted or Coleford.
“This makes no sense – it is an unnecessary cost, less environmentally efficient and affects almost every household,” County Councillor Linda Cohen (LD, Wotton-under-Edge) said.
“By making it more difficult to dispose of waste responsibly, the incidence of flytipping has increased which blights our landscape and is costly to remove.”
She presented the petition which has been signed by 314 to council leaders at the full council meeting at Shire Hall on February 19.
“This is about the people who live on the end of the A38 who suffer from a thing which I keep coming to this council about,” she said.
“Because we live at the end of the county, many of the services which would be the most logical ones to use are actually in South Gloucestershire and not Gloucestershire.
“So people who live in places like Stone and Newport have to drive to the Horsley tip which is 13 miles away rather than using the one in Thornbury which is six miles away.
“This makes no sense at all. It just needs someone to have a conversation.
“If people would just start communication we could start doing things intelligently.
“Because the only people who miss out are my residents who suffer because of the fact they live on the edge of the border.”
Environment cabinet member David Gray (C, Winchcombe and Woodmancote) said neighbouring South Gloucestershire Council introduced ‘residents only’ restrictions at their household recycling centers in 2016.
He said they did this for the specific purpose of preventing waste entering their Sort-It sites from neighbouring areas, including Bristol and Gloucestershire.
“Subsequent discussions with South Gloucestershire were held in 2018, but no agreement could be reached to allow access for Gloucestershire residents,” he said.
“We are aware that South Gloucestershire Council are introducing a booking system for their HRCs next month, and we have therefore asked the question again regarding a cross border agreement, such as we have with Warwickshire in the north of the county.
“Gloucestershire County Council officers have requested a meeting with South Gloucestershire Council officers to explore the potential for this.
“However, South Gloucestershire Council are currently applying the same resident-only rules to their booking system at this time and have given no indication to date that they would be flexible around this access policy.”