Wednesday January 8 | 2020
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‘Time for excuses is over’ say Councils as they issue fine to joint waste contractor By Robert Forrester TUNBRIDGE WELLS and Tonbridge & Malling borough councils have fined Urbaser over its failings in handling the new waste contract. Chief Executive of Tonbridge & Malling Council, Julie Beilby, has written an open letter on behalf of both authorities to the Managing Director of the waste contractor, Javier Peiro. In it she says the ‘time for excuses and apologies was over’ and told Mr Peiro that they would be triggering a penalty clause in the contract following hundreds of complaints from residents about missed bin collections and poor service in both the boroughs. Urbaser took over bin collections for both councils earlier this year in a joint deal worth around £3million.
County Hall gets extra funding but Council Tax will have to rise By Richard Williams KENT County Council [KCC] has unveiled its budget for 2020-2021, and despite extra funding from Central Government, Council Tax will still have to rise. It is the first budget under new Conservative Leader Roger Gough, who has pledged to spend more than £1billion on public services from April 2020, and will also spend nearly £1billion more over the next three years on the county’s infrastructure. County Hall says after a decade of austerity, it has received an additional £28.6million from Central Government
– the first grant rise in ten years – which ‘represents a significant shift from the very challenging budgets of the past ten years’. But taxpayers will still see their Council Tax bills increase by 4 per cent in April 2020, adding nearly £50 to annual payments - or 89p a week. The government now provides around £620million in grants to fund the council, but around half of KCC’s budget for next year - £749million – will come from taxpayers. The extra funding, along with £34million from savings and other income, has allowed KCC to increase spending on day to day services by
£68million for 2020. County Hall will now spend more than £1billion of its £1.6billion budget on services for the county. NEW KCC LEADER Sevenoaks North & Darent Valley Councillor Roger Gough
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Complaints From September 30, residents have been able to recycle glass and food waste as well as opt for a paid-for garden waste collection service. But three months on, and householders have been complaining that bins are still getting missed and that the general service has been poor. In her open letter, Ms Beilby says the two councils wished to ‘express our deep frustration with the poor waste collection service Urbaser is providing for our residents’. She continued: “We always appreciated that the new waste partnership scheme would take some time to bed in and that some teething problems were to be expected. “However, we are now three months into the new arrangements and neither
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