Pendle News Room

Councillor Iqbal, Leader of Pendle Council explained:

“Each year it gets tougher to provide good services in a cold climate of shrinking budgets.

“Since 2010 we’ve had to reduce our spending by over £8 million

“We have worked very hard to make savings which have the least impact on local people and local services.

“That’s why, over the last seven years, we’ve used £6.5 million of our reserves, but these reserves are dwindling,” he stated.

“We’re now forced to make some significant savings of around £400,000 on refuse and recycling collections and street cleaning towards saving a total of £1.2 million over the next year.

This is in order to reach Pendle’s overall target of saving around £4 million by 2021.

This is mainly due to ongoing reductions in our funding from the government which has totalled £7 million since 2010, together with the ending from 1st April 2018 of Lancashire County Council’s annual subsidy of £760,000 towards the cost of our waste and recycling service.

“It’s vital that Pendle people give their views on how best to make the savings as we  need to know which proposals our residents would find the most acceptable.

“Unfortunately we do not have the option to do nothing, he stated.”

The consultation will start during the week commencing Monday 9 October and will end on Sunday 26th November and the views of local people will inform the difficult decisions councillors will have to make on Thursday 21st December at the Full Council meeting.

Proposals local people are being consulted on include:
 

• Keeping the grey bin refuse collections fortnightly but changing the brown bin and paper and card recycling collections to every four weeks instead of the current two weeks.
  
  A new bin for paper and card can be provided on request to help with storing this recycling for four weeks.
   
• Changing the brown bin recycling, paper and card recycling and grey bin refuse collection to every three weeks instead of the current fortnightly collection system. A new bin for paper and card can be provided on request to help with storing this recycling for three weeks.
   

The survey is on Pendle Council’s website www.pendle.gov.uk and also via this direct link https://tinyurl.com/y8y5lsc4

The consultation also includes questions on proposals to reduce street cleaning in order to balance the budget to help meet the savings target.

Councillor David Clegg who leads on refuse and recycling services said:

“ The changes to refuse and recycling collections and street cleaning will be put into force from April 2018.

“I urge everyone to fill in the survey to tell us which of the proposals work best for them. 

“It only takes 10 minutes but public opinion will help Pendle Council make these difficult decisions,” he said.