A GROUP of hard-pressed Teignmouth pensioners is angry at the ending of the monthly garden waste collection, writes Tim Hall.
Teignbridge Council's trial collection scheme finishes this month. Now residents have been told that they either have to take garden waste to Newton Abbot themselves for recycling, or pay a private contractor to collect it and take it away.
But elderly residents of Ashleigh Way say that they are typical of many who are forced to rely on state pensions, and who cannot afford to pay anything extra for the disposal of garden waste.
Many also depend upon public transport, and do not feel able to take waste bags to the Newton Abbot recycling centre.
At a meeting at the home of William and Joan Hayward, Mrs Hayward said that she and her husband had lived in Teignmouth for 53 years, and only now was life getting difficult.
'What else are they going to take from us?' she said. 'They're riding roughshod over us, and these are sneaky charges. Our garden is mainly decorative, with hedges and shrubs that you cannot compost at home.'
Mrs Hayward said that other options for disposing of waste were cut off, because their deeds prevented them from having bonfires, and their hedges had to be no higher than 6ft.
Eric Francis said that people were now going to start flytipping garden waste, adding to the council's environmental problems.
Merrell Day said that her monthly council tax bill was equivalent to one week's pension.
'In effect, I only receive three week's pension for a four-week month,' she said. 'It's plainly wrong.'
Bob Dack said that he regularly took bottles and cans to the recycling bins in a Teignmouth car park.
'Another firm takes away our paper free of charge,' he said. 'I'm doing enough as it is.'
Conservative town and district councillor Geoff Bladon said that he found the situation 'intolerable and totally unacceptable'. It was causing 'serious alarm and distress' to many people who had been the backbone of the country.
'A large amount of the population of the this whole area are elderly, and reliant on the pathetic state pension supplied by this present government,' he said. 'That pension is completely insufficient to meet their requirements as it is, without adding further burden to their already overstretched outgoings.'
Cllr Bladon said that many pensioners derived real pleasure from their gardens, and strove to keep them looking nice.
'Their gardens are a credit to the area and they should be rewarded for their efforts, and not penalised with extra charges from the district council,' he said. 'In the last council the Conservatives voted against the high council tax increase, and tried to restrict it to 5 per cent, but were defeated.'
If they formed the next government pensions would be substantially increased. But in the meantime Teignbridge Council should either provide a free wheelie bin for garden waste, or continue the bags scheme with larger bags providing a free twice-monthly collection.
'The council can easily cover the cost in the long term from the sale of those bags, and the resale of the compost that they are currently giving away free to farmers,' he said.
Liberal Democrat councillor Gordon Hook, Teignbridge Council's portfolio holder for the environment, said that the garden waste bag collection scheme had been introduced as an emergency measure in May as a direct response to the previous Executive's decision to stop collecting garden waste in wheelie bins.
'The scheme has been costing £1,000 per week, and I don't have a budgetary allowance for it,' he said. 'It is not my wish to withdraw it at all, but it is my sincere hope and expectation that it will come back in an improved form in March next year.'
Cllr Hook also said that there would be extra skips provided throughout the district on Saturdays for the collection of garden waste only.