Sunday, December 03, 2006

Who's got the best reycling record in Norfolk? (Clue: It sure ain't a certain City...)

Fascinating statistics released from Norfolk County Council and pass to me via a recycling campaign have led to some red faces around City Hall, I understand. Using the Audit Commission reports from 2002-2005 it plots all of the district council performances in collecting recycling.

In 2002 Norwich City came 4th out of 7 districts - beating Broadland, Breckland and Great Yarmouth. Since then, all three Tory authorities have since jumped ahead of the Labour / LibDem run City Council, leaving Norwich trailing in last place - almost exactly where we were three years previously.

Tory run Broadland comes a clear first, followed by LibDem North Norfolk.

David Cameron has clearly grabbed the green agenda and these figures show why - time and time again it is Conservative Councils that are leading the way in such fields, whilst councils dominated by the left (as Norwich still is) do very badly. The Norwich Conservatives take this subject seriously, so why won't Labour and the LibDems?

They are all talk and no action - and on doorsteps, actions speak louder than words.

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Antony, you are totally right. Norwich's recycling record is doing next to nothing, and is nationally poor as well as being bottom in Norfolk.

In a way we cannot really blame City Labour too much, other than they should have got straight away onto Waste Strategy over the summer, having their own policy/strategy under Brian Morrey, rather than taking little action until 2007 and relying on Party Consensus to more slowly forward, which is double edged for action.

Who is largely to blame. It has to be the Couzins LibDem administration, who for 4 years did not get the total bin infrastructure in place, even though signing a words/little action Zero Wastre charter in June 2002; whilst making multi million pound financial committments everywhere to Car Parks, Theatres, Memorial Gardens, Norwich Market, A guilt edge inflexible City Care contract, pedestrianisations, but just simply not enough on basic universal services. Not everyone is a Culture Vulture like Hereward Cooke!

Now Waste Recycling in Norwich is having to be "Fastracked" from 2007, whilstt very welcome with the Cash planned, £2.25m over 2 years, should have committed 2-3 years ago by the LibDems instead of a few other mentioned schemes. LibDems are ok folk, but useful administrators and even worse handling the City' Cash. No wonder they took such a druming from voters in LibDem wards who decided the Recycling service was rubbish and protested voting Green in May.