LETTERS – System could be better

I have written to the council about Spalding’s Recycling Centre booking in system.

You have to book to go to the centre, which I understand, which obviously helps reduce the numbers of people attending to limit the spread of COVID-19 which is a good idea – no problem with that.

What is confusing however is the wording that is used on the website booking form as to which days you can take specific waste.

I ended up calling up the council number to find out exactly what we could take on the day we had booked.

This all seems very strange to me that this system is all to do with stopping the spread of the virus and yet it is forcing households to make numerous trips to the skip in one week if necessary just to remove all recycling items that they need to, which defeats the purpose that the council has set out to do.

Also the centre is outside in the open and it is limited to time slots – surely one household should be able to book a slot and take all the recycling required and get rid of it in one trip with minimum risk?

I am confused how this is more of a risk of spreading the COVID-19 than the current system that the council is running.

This system also encourages fly tipping (even though there is a problem with this generally) but lately it is much worse.

We have seen more and more household items, fridges, mattresses, sofas, dumped on paths in the street, but what are people to do when they can’t access the council services?

I know that there is a collection service of larger items at a one-off cost and only one item at a time is collected but we do pay our council tax which as far as I was aware did include services for waste.

I hope that the council looks at this system and changes it to make it simpler and clearer with less trips required by households.

Mrs A Matthews
Spalding