Residents reject booking system for recycling centre

During Essex County Council's recently closed consultation into the permanent introduction of a booking system to dispose of waste at all Council household recycling centres, the South Woodham Ferrers Council Taxpayers Association ran a survey, asking you, the residents of South Woodham Ferrers, specific questions on the booking system.

This was because we do not think Essex County Council's consultation adequately explored the issues of the booking system as they apply to our town as a lower use site that rarely if ever (except during the height of lockdown), experiences queuing. We think from our conversations with you, that the booking system merely adds unnecessary inconvenience to people's every day lives.

Our own survey, unlike the ECC one, looked into whether residents had actually experienced issues in South Woodham with accessing their recycling centre before the booking system was introduced.

As a party, we have listened to residents who have concerns that the booking system may be leading to more pressure on kerbside recycling, or even flytipping with at least two districts in Essex seeing dramatic increases in flytipping over the past six months and these feeling also come out in this survey.

In this survey, completed by 28 of you, nearly two thirds (62%) of you rejected the booking system for South Woodham Ferrers. We conclude from this and our conversations with residents, that a permanent booking system in South Woodham is unneccessary. Seperately, we think that the council has not evidenced what it calls 'transference' of waste from other sites, i.e, if there is a queue at say the Maldon HWRC, that people might drive over to South Woodham Ferrers to dispose of their waste.

We also think the booking system goes counter to Essex County Council's Waste Strategy (another consultation out now) which cites several times the importance of lowering barriers to recycling, which introducing a booking system, particularly an unnecessary one, would go counter to.

We have sent our survey off to Essex County Council and we hope they are able to consider it along with the huge 18,000 responses to their own. Thank you to those of you who took the time to fill out our survey. It is important to have our say no matter how futile it sometimes seems, the powers that be sometimes surprise us and reverse their decisions....see our recent rail ticket office post! So watch this space!

AN APPEAL: If you think like us that South Woodham often loses out because the main parties don't consider your views, then do consider joining us. We will listen to your views and act on the concerns of South Woodam residents- always asking what's best for us