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Shop NowWheelie Bin News Roundup 16th July
Wheelie Bin News Roundup 16th July
A bungling thief is facing a jail term after he was caught trying to hide a safe he stole in a wheelie bin. The thief, along with an accomplice, broke in to a shop in Elswick, Newcastle, in the early hours of the morning, looking for things to steal.
The pair stole a safe containing £20,000 and hid it in a wheelie bin while they escaped. Little did they know that they had activated a silent alarm, and they were being monitored by a security company. They were apprehended by police soon after.
The accomplice attempted to flee but the main perpetrator couldn’t as his leg was still in a cast from an accident where he’d fallen through some decking.
The man pleaded guilty to burglary at South East Northumberland Magistrates’ Court, and he has been told to expect a jail term, given that this was his 125th offence! He has been sent to Newcastle Crown Court for sentencing, as the theft involved such a large amount of money.
Bromsgrove and Redditch councils came fourth in a list of the top most expensive green waste collections that don’t run all year round. Both councils charge £45 per year for a fortnightly collection which runs from March to November. Only Sheffield City Council, Carmarthenshire County Council and Worcester City Council charge more.
If you live in Harlow though, you have to pay a whopping £96 per year for fortnightly green waste collections.
The issue of sky-high collection charges was featured on the BBC programme Rip Off Britain, which found that councils earn almost £74 million per year from collections. More than half of the local authorities in the UK now charge for green waste collections.
The government say that councils should be charging residents reasonable amounts for collections, and that residents’ views should be taken into account.
But a spokesman for the Local Government Association said that councils in England will face a gap in funding of over £5 billion by 2020. He added that while many councils were able to offer free garden waste collections at first, some are having to charge a fee now to reflect the cost of providing the service in the face of budget cuts.
Replacing 20,000 faulty recycling bins in Solihull has cost the council more than £85,000 so far, according to the council member for Environment and Housing. The council also admitted that it may have to replace the other 56,000 bins across the borough.
In December last year, faults were discovered with brown recycling bins that had been supplied to the council. Some were splitting, while others couldn’t be lifted onto lorries.
The £85,000 costs included putting on extra delivery crews, environmental services, and administrative staff, as well as replacing the defunct bins.
The council still don’t know exactly how many bins are damaged, but refuse crews put a sticker on those that need replacing so they can be easily identified. The worst case scenario is that all of the bins from the same supplier will split in the near future and have to be replaced, which amounts to a further 56,000 faulty bins that are still in use.