Stone traders unable to use town recycling centre after cross-border 'incursions'

Staffordshire County Council is looking at ways to tackle the cross-border “incursions”, the authority’s leader has said, after running of the 14 household waste recycling centres (HWRCs) was brought in-house earlier this year.

The sites were previously operated on behalf of the county council by Amey, who were awarded a two-year emergency contract that ran until March 29 following the termination of the previous contract with another firm by mutual agreement. Work has now taken place to bring the centres back into county council management, including the transfer of around 60 staff.

County councillors have been given an update on the move. In his leader's statement, Councillor Alan White said: “It is intended that a further report will be submitted to cabinet in the autumn on the HWRC network to consider a five-year costed Maintenance Improvement Plan and reviewed and updated usage policy.”

Councillor Jill Hood, who represents Stone, highlighted the issues faced by local traders wanting to use the town’s household waste recycling centre at Stone Business Park.

She said: “We have the most efficient recycling centre in Stone; it is very well used and it really is welcomed by residents.

“But I’m having more and more traders get in touch with me complaining that they are being turned away because there just isn’t the capacity to take their waste. I went there and did a mini-survey of my own, had a look at the vans and trucks that were coming in to dispose of their trade recycling waste.

“They were coming from Wolverhampton, Coventry, Birmingham – I couldn’t believe the areas that these people were coming from to get rid of their recycling. I spoke to a very helpful officer at the county who said to me unfortunately we don’t have border control.

“It’s very disappointing to me that we don’t keep our Staffordshire border localised to Stone for our traders. I ask if this county council can help – I would be very grateful and so would traders.”

Councillor Simon Tagg, cabinet member for environment, infrastructure and climate change, responded: “That is a big problem we have inherited from the previous contractor. Officers are aware of that and through the scrutiny process and cabinet we can explore how we deal with that.

“It should be a residents-first service and a residents of Staffordshire-first service. We know businesses do have to use them but we need to manage that and have a process, which isn’t really clear and in place at the moment.

“We will be working to bring that in and we will see benefits across the board, particularly for those that suffer from cross-border incursions, such as near Stoke or on the borders east, west and south. I’m really optimistic about this, it’s a good development to bring them in house.

“But we’ve got to be mindful of possibilities of fly-tipping if businesses do come from out of the area and try to find a country road to dump it on. We don’t want that to happen either because the districts and boroughs have to pick up the bill for that.”

Councillor White added: “We are working on new policy to deal with the cross-border incursions which will be going to Councillor (Tina) Clements’ scrutiny committee in the autumn.

“I think there will be proposals in there that will start to address that problem, but I would ask the scrutiny committee to be careful of the unintended consequences of implementing a new policy because fly-tipping is that potential unintended consequence.”