At last night's (22/09/22) Wokingham Borough Council meeting the issue of stopping providing residents with caddy lining bags was on the agenda as it had been challenged ( the decision being called in) by the Conservatives.
Cllr Pauline Jorgensen, Leader of the Conservative Group spoke:
"I am pleased to see that the reasons for our call in have been accepted by officers and that the council admits that the decision to remove the provision of caddy liners was a key decision and had not been made using due process, but instead had been made in secret behind closed doors.
"The Conservative Group believe that the removal of free Caddy liners is likely to damage the level of food recycling in the Borough, this is when food recycling has a target to increase saving a further £350k this year as the cost of processing food waste is about 1/6th of the cost of blue bag waste. In the Earley and Woodley Chronicle the LD leader seems to agree with us saying “the volume of recycling could dip slightly”. For that reason the removal of free food caddy liners is likely to cost a lot more than it will save if the benefits, instead of being £350k higher are actually negative.
"The Liberals originally claimed that ditching caddy liners was necessary because of Environmental concerns, they then suggested that the Conservatives had cut the budget, when this was proven to be incorrect they now seem to say in the paper that it hasn’t been budgeted for next year. This is blindingly obvious as the budget for next financial year has not been agreed and will not be until Feb next year. If anyone is cutting the budget it is the Lib/Lab coalition.
"The paper furthermore tries to blame the failure to follow due process on an officer decision, however only two months ago the Liberal exec member was shouting about it being his decision in a Borough press release.
"The LD leader also confirmed in the Woodley and Earley Chronicle article that in direct contradiction to the recommendations in this paper, which clearly state the withdrawal of the original officer decision, that the “decision has been made” and “the Exec meeting is simply to ratify it.”
For these reasons the Conservative Group opposed the recommendation.
