Dudley Council's 'dire' communication over new green waste fees slammed by councillors

Communications about the introduction of green waste collection fees are so bad one panel member even claimed the authority is approaching the point of discriminating against visually impaired people.

The damning comments were made at a meeting of Dudley Council’s Highways and Environmental Services Select Committee on Thursday.

Councillor Karl Denning said: “Communication is dire, visually impaired people can’t read a letter or look at Facebook. It is disgusting, almost to the point of being discriminatory.

“Communication is key to everything. As a council, we don’t communicate properly.”

The charge of £36 for 25 green waste collections each year was introduced in the council’s budget which was approved on March 4.

Residents will have to pay the charge from April 1 and 30,000 people have already signed up but officers came under fire for not getting the message out that charges were being introduced.

Councillor Keiran Casey said: “From a communications perspective this has been handled so badly, people don’t know it is happening.”

The council’s director of environment, Nick McGurk, said: “We need to look at communication methods, letter drops or putting things on bins is costly.

“It is disappointing, I believe the council used its normal methods of communication.

“We don’t want people not to subscribe because they don’t know about this.”

Committee chairperson, Councillor Ed Lawrence, added: “I have just had an email with my council tax bill – there is nothing there.”

The committee’s vice-chairperson, Cllr Peter Miller had a different concern about charging.

He said: “This is a bad decision, how much green waste is going to be fly-tipped?"

Mr McGurk responded: “We looked at other authorities that put this in many years ago, there is no correlation between green waste fly-tipping and charging for green waste collection.”