TOWN hall coffers are on course to get a £275,000 boost following a controversial decision to remove charity collection banks from a network of council-owned sites in Northumberland.
Charities such as the Salvation Army, the British Heart Foundation and Scope were told earlier this year to remove their collection points for people’s unwanted clothes, shoes and other textiles from household waste sites and car parks, so that the cash-strapped county council could take over the service itself and make money.
The decision was labelled immoral by one county councillor and one of the authority’s own scrutiny committees urged it abandon the plan, amid fears about the impact the loss of income would have on good causes.
Despite the criticism, the council went ahead and brought in specialist Scotland-based company NWS to operate the textile collection sites on its behalf.
Charities were evicted from 31 sites, and a target was set for the change to generate income totalling £304,000 for the council in 2011/12.
Now a new report to councillors says income from the 57 sites operated by NWS was £116,000 between April and September, and is forecast to be £275,000 by April – £29,000 short of the target figure.
Head of waste management, Paul Jones, says the amount of textiles being deposited at the collection banks is 13% lower than forecast. He says this is mainly due to over-optimistic initial predictions of the weight of materials, but is also down to increased competition from private firms who pay people for unwanted textiles, and people hanging on to their clothes for longer due to the economic downturn.
He says the ability of the council to achieve its £304,000 target is “very sensitive” to changes in the volume of textiles received.
The decision to evict the charities was taken because of the council’s need to make £45m in budget savings this year.
Conservative councillor Wayne Daley described it as “simply immoral” and a real blow to the charity sector in Northumberland. And scrutiny committee members feared it could lead to people not donating unwanted textiles to council-run banks.
Yesterday Salvation Army member Brian Dixon of Bedlington, who runs a textiles collection service for the charity, said he had managed to find 10 to 15 new sites for the banks after losing 11 council-owned locations. “We have been proactive on this and have not relied on the council finding us new sites,” he said. “It has had an effect on us, and I would say we are about 20 tonnes down in Northumberland on this time last year.
“It is a matter of educating people about the new sites we have, but folk are very good at donating to the Salvation Army. We just have to plod on and do as well as we can. I still think it was a very regrettable decision the council took.”
Mr Jones says the council has helped charities displaced by the changes to find 16 new collection sites on private land, and pointed them in the direction of 42 more. He says there will also be further discussions about helping the charities get more textiles through joint household collections with the council’s refuse service.
