City will swing into twin bins

THE HEAD of an inquiry team set up to look into Southampton City Council's controversial rubbish collection scheme has demanded to know how city chiefs will spend £750,000 which was due to be set aside in case the city reintroduced weekly waste collection.

A MORI survey has suggested residents are massively in favour of the scheme.

Labour's Richard Williams, pictured, chairman of the City Council's environment and transport scrutiny panel, said members were unclear about what would happen to the cash pile put aside as a contingency by the ruling Liberal Democrats just in case councillors voted to scrap the controversial project and revert to weekly waste collection.

Cllr Williams said: "We need to know what impact this has on our budgets and on the medium-term plan.

"We need to know how much has been allocated and how much has been spent."

Members of the city council's Liberal Democrat dominated Cabinet are expected to vote to roll-out the scheme across the whole city at a meeting next Monday.

The project will then have to be given the final green light by full council on September 22.

The MORI survey of residents taking part in the so called "twin bin" recycling scheme revealed a staggering 90 per cent were in favour of the project.

Eight-eight per cent of residents told pollsters that it was "easy" or "fairly easy" to adapt to the scheme which collects household rubbish and recyclable waste on alternate weeks.

Eighty per cent of people were "very satisfied" or "fairly satisfied" with the service. At a series of tense budget meetings in February, the ruling administration and the opposition Labour group agreed to halt the process until the MORI survey was published. All groups agreed to abide by the findings of the survey and an inquiry by the environment and transport scrutiny panel.