Just Who do Councils Work For?

[Rhyd6]

Need to take an old mattress to the local tip but apparently this is no longer possible unless we obtain a "Household Recycling Centre Vehicle Permit" which will take about 15 days to process. Once we have obtained said permit, having given the council jobsworth details of our life story and the ins and outs of a dogs bowels, we will be allowed to make an appointment to take said mattress to the tip.
As you know we live in Wales, our council is Labour, the Senedd is Labour and as they have just created 30+ more Senedd posts and made sure that the new constituencies have been created by splitting current labour contrituencies into two it looks as though Labour will rule in perpetuity.
July 4th is approaching at a rate of knots and it seems that we shall all be between a rock and a hard place and only be able to travel there at 20mph.

Ain't life grand.

R6

[DrFfybes]

Tie it around a 20 limit post and set fire to it

Actually - you need a "vehicle permit" to go to the tip? In some Authorities you need proof of address, others you need a permit for a trailer, van, or pickup, but what happens if you park around the corner and carry it in?

[the0ni0nking]

What is stopping you cutting it up, putting it in your car and driving to the tip?

We still have tips in England and while you're meant to have a sticker on display showing you pay council tax in the same local authority, there's never anyone on the entrance to check!

[dionaeamuscipula]

Need to take an old mattress to the local tip but apparently this is no longer possible unless we obtain a "Household Recycling Centre Vehicle Permit" which will take about 15 days to process. Once we have obtained said permit, having given the council jobsworth details of our life story and the ins and outs of a dogs bowels, we will be allowed to make an appointment to take said mattress to the tip.
As you know we live in Wales, our council is Labour, the Senedd is Labour and as they have just created 30+ more Senedd posts and made sure that the new constituencies have been created by splitting current labour contrituencies into two it looks as though Labour will rule in perpetuity.
July 4th is approaching at a rate of knots and it seems that we shall all be between a rock and a hard place and only be able to travel there at 20mph.

Ain't life grand.

R6

I presume you intend to use a van or other large vehicle, and that your council doesn't offer a bulky waste disposal service. The need for a permit is to prevent commercial businesses from using household centres (which they wouldn't get charged for) rather than properly paying for disposal. The last time I had a mattress for dumping it went in the back of an estate car.

This kind of permit is certainly not a Wales thing, its commonly in use in HWRCs all over Britain.

DM

[bungeejumper]

What is stopping you cutting it up, putting it in your car and driving to the tip?

Depends where you live, I think. The last time I had to dispose of an old double mattress (Buckinghamshire), I was told that it was "mixed recyclable waste", or something like that. I was told to remove the fabric and padding with a Stanley knife, then to chop up the sprung steel chassis (a task which is bloody tough even with fence-wire cutters, and did I say bloody dangerous as well as just plain bloody?) Took me about a week!

We still have tips in England and while you're meant to have a sticker on display showing you pay council tax in the same local authority, there's never anyone on the entrance to check!

It never hurts to take some ID that the council will understand. Your latest Council Tax demand will do nicely.

One of our local tips is run by the local traveller community, who bid for the site licence about ten years ago, and got it. They can be relied upon to fall upon anything with scrap value, and never mind the complicated questions. Quite a lot more convenient than the jobsworths at another site who'll put your numberplate onto the ANPR blacklist if they think there are too many metal screws in the wood that you're chucking into the skip for biomass.

A favourite game at the council site is to move the rubble skip from one end of the site to the other, and then back again. So there you are with a bootful of old cement and concrete and old sinks and washbasins, and just when you think you've parked your creaking car as close as possible, they hang a "use other skip" label on it and all you've got to do then is drive round and round the site until you find it.

All the while, to the cheery salutation: "Oi! Where d'you think you're going with that? That's stainless, that is, not aluminium. I could FINE you for that!"
BJ

[Rhyd6]

In order to obtain said Permit we have to provide photographs of the vehicle including photo of rear number plate, copy of logbook, driving licence, council tax bill. The tip is staffed by two men who have passed their curmudgeonly exams with 1st class honours. A friend was disposing of some offcuts of kitchen worktops, he drives a small camper van but they wouldn't let him in because it was a van. He took the worktops out of the vehicle and went to walk in with them but they still refused to let him in because he might trip and injure himself neither would they let him borrow their wheelbarrow as it was council property and he hadn't been trained in its use. He is a retained fireman and to say he was rather scathing in his assessment of their customer service is putting it mildly.
When you come across attitudes and sheer bloodimindedness like this it makes it more understandable why some people resort to fly tipping.

R6

[UncleEbenezer]

In order to obtain said Permit we have to provide photographs of the vehicle including photo of rear number plate, copy of logbook, driving licence, council tax bill.
R6

I recollect something like that from a few years back. Had to register one's vehicle to be allowed in to the tip.

I did wonder if that could be cause for a discrimination action. The discrimination being against people who don't have a vehicle and have to rely on hiring one, or on the goodwill of a friend whose vehicle isn't allowed 'cos he lives just across the border in a different council tax area.

[DrFfybes]

In order to obtain said Permit we have to provide photographs of the vehicle including photo of rear number plate, copy of logbook, driving licence, council tax bill. The tip is staffed by two men who have passed their curmudgeonly exams with 1st class honours

R6

Of course the likely situation is this is nothing to do with the council, certainly not in England, as they're all outsourced to Veola or Biffa or whoever who get given some vague rules and choose who to implement them.

Paul

[tjh290633]

In order to obtain said Permit we have to provide photographs of the vehicle including photo of rear number plate, copy of logbook, driving licence, council tax bill. The tip is staffed by two men who have passed their curmudgeonly exams with 1st class honours

R6

Of course the likely situation is this is nothing to do with the council, certainly not in England, as they're all outsourced to Veola or Biffa or whoever who get given some vague rules and choose who to implement them.

Paul

It is our County Council that sets the rules. Veolia might run the dump, but they have to do what the council says. They ran the appointment scheme at a number of sites and have extended it to all of them this year. Previously you had to show your bus pass or driving licence to prove you were a resident. Now, apart from giving your insides leg measurement, you have to give your postcode and your vehicle registration to get an appointment. They allow 2 wheeled trailers and small vans or pickups.

TJH

[didds]

This kind of permit is certainly not a Wales thing, its commonly in use in HWRCs all over Britain.

DM

yup - its been in our area for several years. "My" vehicle is a VWT28 campervan - a leisure vehicle not business. For years I had to register annually and I got a FOC paper permit - that became an email for the last couple of years. This permit permitted a limited, but useful, amount of visits per year . Half a dozen maybe? Certainly more than adequate.

It has recently become £20 a year to use a van - including this this leisure van, complete with bed, cooker, pop up roof, fridge, cooker and sink. I/we make maybe two trips a year at most in it to the recycling centre. So i dunno what will happen when we get a bulky item cos there's no way we are gonna pay a tenner a visit effectively just because we own a VW T28 and not a Volvo 440 estate (presumably we'll need to find a friend with a volvo 440 estate!)

[didds]

Depends where you live, I think. The last time I had to dispose of an old double mattress (Buckinghamshire), I was told that it was "mixed recyclable waste", or something like that. I was told to remove the fabric and padding with a Stanley knife, then to chop up the sprung steel chassis (a task which is bloody tough even with fence-wire cutters, and did I say bloody dangerous as well as just plain bloody?) Took me about a week!
BJ

And that approach will of course NEVER lead to fly tipping, ever.

[stevensfo]

As long as we can get it in the car, we can throw whatever we want into our council tip. Staff are really friendly. They help to take heavy stuff from the car and there are always guys who are looking for stuff they can use, which is great. Though they do check. Any extremely large items, we go online and choose date, then leave the item in front of the house, and it's taken.

Steve

[Bminusrob]

Can anyone guess why there is so much fly-tipping?

Last week, I took a few bits of old guttering to my local tip. The brackets, T-pieces etc were in a plastic bag, while I had cut up the guttering and downpipes into short lengths to fit in the car (without putting the rear seat down). When I got to the tip, it was assessed as DIY waste, and I am only allowed one bagful, unless I am prepared to pay £5.60 for wach additional bag. I got into a discussion with the jobsworth, and asked about the government legistaltion meaning I am allowed to tip this kind of stuff. The response was "above my job grade..".but I can leave one bag, and come back again tomorrow with another bagful. I asked about fly-tipping, but got the "above my job grade" response.

As I only live two miles from the tip, coming back the next day was not going to be a problem. However, after I dropped the bag of stuff in the appropriate place, Mr Above-My-Job-Grade said I could leave the rest without charge.

Perhaps he was just lonely.

[Mike4]

Depends where you live, I think. The last time I had to dispose of an old double mattress (Buckinghamshire), I was told that it was "mixed recyclable waste", or something like that. I was told to remove the fabric and padding with a Stanley knife, then to chop up the sprung steel chassis (a task which is bloody tough even with fence-wire cutters, and did I say bloody dangerous as well as just plain bloody?) Took me about a week!
BJ

And that approach will of course NEVER lead to fly tipping, ever.

Fly tipping has always struck me as a rather extreme response to council red tape.

I mean, renting an aeroplane just to get rid of some rubbish? Surely hiring a skip would be cheaper...

[bungeejumper]

I mean, renting an aeroplane just to get rid of some rubbish?

Agreed. It didn't work with Nigel Farage either, did it?

BJ

[Gerry557]

i just leave it outside with a sign saying "Do not take away" its normally gone in a couple of hours ......

[didds]

Perhaps he was just lonely.

I can think of a shorter word than "lonely".

[Lootman]

And that approach will of course NEVER lead to fly tipping, ever.

Fly tipping has always struck me as a rather extreme response to council red tape.

The law of unintended consequences is a thing. If councils make it too inconvenient, difficult and burdensome to get rid of crap officially then the odds have to go up that some will do it unofficially.

In a way this is what happens at all levels of government. Every new restriction or requirement leads to new loopholes and go-arounds, which then require more new rules, that lead to more avoidance, and the spiral never ends. Once you head down the rabbit hole of ever more government control, the bleeding never stops. Just look at our expansive tax system to see how complexity becomes self-perpetuating.

[didds]

I got into a discussion with the jobsworth, and asked about the government legistaltion meaning I am allowed to tip this kind of stuff. The response was "above my job grade..".but I can leave one bag, and come back again tomorrow with another bagful

At the risk of derailing its a bit like the only-2-packs-of-paracetamol-per-visit "rule".

[bungeejumper]

At the risk of derailing its a bit like the only-2-packs-of-paracetamol-per-visit "rule".

At the risk of following you down the rabbit hole, the two-packs-of-paracetamol rule has at least some logic to it. If somebody is really intent on getting hold of enough paracetamol to kill themselves (and trust me, it isn't a nice death....), they'll have to go into two or three shops to do it.

Which means that they've made two or three separate decisions to buy the pills. Which helps all the shopkeepers to sleep at night, because perhaps it wasn't their pills that killed the customer but somebody else's? Kinda like the reputed practice of loading one gun in a firing squad with a blank cartridge?

No such excuses for the tip operators. If you want to deposit three bags and they make you come back twice, then that's two climate-destroying, smog-making, dinosaur-juice-guzzling trips that you didn't need to make. Which is nobody's idea of environmental awareness.

BJ