Does Southend Labour’s introduction of fortnightly bin collections stand up to their slogan: “building a city to be proud of”?

By now almost all Southend residents will know that Southend Labour, alongside their Liberal Democrat and Independent Group partners, will be introducing fortnightly bin collections.

Despite it rapidly becoming common knowledge, I was surprised to read just how many residents were unaware of the impending doom coming to their doorsteps.

This is not to insult anyone who didn’t know for it is true to say those who don’t follow the council meetings, read the Echo, or happened to have dumped the political leaflets straight in the bin at the last local elections before reading them, would find it hard to keep up with the shenanigans of the current administration.

Blame

For those vaguely aware of local political matters, the blame for all this has been brewing for years between the rainbow Coalition and the Southend Conservatives.

The Conservatives had initially asserted Labour had neglected their duty to address the waste contract early enough, which led to taxpayers paying a substantial amount to Veola to extend their service.

When Labour finally did get into gear, they then allowed fortnightly collections to be included in the tender process in March 2022.

They did this in fear the council couldn’t have afforded a weekly collection. Right or wrong, this decision opened up our city to the possibility of fortnightly collections.

The Conservatives fought the 2023 local elections on the basis they would ensure bin collections were weekly, but after winning found that is wasn’t possible siting the emus substantial £14m projected budget deficit that they were not aware of previous to the election.

Having been a primary Conservative policy, Labour couldn’t be blamed for licking their lips as they dutifully informed Southend residents of this broken promise.

Personally, I had a couple of problems with this. Firstly, a broken election promise does not excuse financial mis-management. By the time the Tories were booted out in 2024 the deficit was down to around £1.9m. Incidentally, the projected deficit is now back up to £8m under Labour with Adult and child social care highlighted as the main culprit once again. Apparently, projected deficits are expected at the start of the year and addresses throughout.

And secondly, as Labour were the founders of the fortnightly bin collections it was predictably disingenuous to omit this information as they went for the Conservative’s open goal. Alas it is politics!

In the end it was Labour who then said they couldn’t reverse the decision by the Tories and here we are: in 2024, with all the technology at our fingertips and with the highest taxation since the war, we can’t even get our bins emptied.

Happy?

For us political laymen it doesn’t really matter how we got here, us residents are left to deal with the consequences.

There are some who are quite happy with it. They have seen it work in other places and don’t mind our streets adorned with wheelie bins. I can see one so far under-sold benefit and that it will force residents to separate their re-cycling.

Basildon might attest otherwise after residents were left furious with the results. And which party is riding to the rescue? Yes, you guessed it - the Labour Party! They vowed to “fix the bins” and return weekly-bin collections to the residents of Basildon!

To be fair, what’s right in one part of the country (or just down the road) may not be right in another.

Perhaps Southend residents will love the changes and it will be the right thing after all.

Perhaps we will all have been worrying about nothing and we just lacked the foresight of our political rulers.

Either way, we only have eight years to endure!

So, does this change make us a city to be proud of?

In my humble opinion, this is not what I’d call ‘building a city to be proud of’, as so often quoted after every sentence of the current Labour administration. I cannot remember feeling a sense of pride walking past wheelie bins, fly tip mountains, rats and cockroaches!

Call me dramatic, but there is a demoralising symbolism to all this. The message is we can’t afford it. We’re broke. We’re not worth it. We don’t deserve it. And there is more pain to come according to Starmer.

Yet, if we really want to build a city to be proud of we need to keep it clean and tidy - it is such a basic expectation.

Confelicity has agreed in its manifesto to reinstate weekly collections and plans must be made to spare the funds necessary long before a repeat of the excuse that we cannot afford it.