GREEN GARDEN WASTE DISPOSAL MAKES BROMLEY RESIDENTS SEE RED

1.47.20pm UTC (GMT +0000) Mon 14th Jul 2003

Peter Hill

Summer's here - and Bromley's residents are enraged to find that they can wait for up to 4 weeks to have bags of rotting garden waste removed.

"We pay for this service - 60p per bag, on top of all the other Council charges" said Beckenham resident, Peter Hill. "But it simply isn't working."

Bromley Council pared down its Green Garden Waste collection from a weekly service when it was collected at the same time as other household refuse, to fortnightly in February last year. But with only limited resources put into the scheme, when the weather warms up and greenery grows, services are soon over-booked, leaving residents fuming over stinking bags of rotting vegetation.

To add to the problem, the old 'answerphone' booking system has been replaced with an oversubscribed 'helpline' which is unable to cope with the load, adding further delays.

"I had to call every day for a week to get through," said Mrs Kelly, another resident in Beckenham. "Even then, Onyx's attitude was that they couldn't care the less how often I had to call or how long I would have to wait to have the bags collected."

Mrs Webster was told by Onyx that, even though she had bought the Council's stickers, she "didn't have enough waste" and Onyx refused to collect it.

Lib Dem councillor Denise Payton

Cllr Denise Payton said: "About 3,500 Bromley residents support - and pay for - this service which recycles garden waste through a composting facility. Tory-led Bromley Council has underfunded this scheme, ignoring the recycling potential, and are now forcing many residents to consider other means of disposing garden waste. It can be no coincidence that fly-tipping is on the increase and more and more people are using other illegal ways of disposing their garden refuse."