It's time to stop the bickering and let things settle

Despite my assurance to your readers that my recent letter regarding wheelie bins would be my last, I feel obliged to reply to councillor Rush's letter in this week's Postbag.

I can assure the councillor that I was not "mistaken" regarding the legal position but appear to have been misled by a council officer who advised me that I could continue with a bag collection and that I could also return the delivered bins.

This appeared to borne out by the subsequent collection of my bags and the removal of the bins.

There is widespread confusion amongst members of the public, and members of staff, regarding what may or may not be done and both I and many of my fellow councillors have been inundated with complaints and queries.

It was with this in mind that I wrote to the council requesting a cooling-off period in order to let the new system drop into place by collecting everything as it was presented.

Recycled material, I am informed, has now reached into the high 30%'s and increasing; waste material for landfill has dropped correspondingly. I am confident that the public is, by now, aware of the need to support the council in these two objectives.

During recent weeks the waste collectors have been telling us a thing or two by collecting the waste in the manner that they feel to be most appropriate. That is why I would like the council to hold off and watch what happens.

It matters little how the waste is collected providing that the aforementioned objectives are achieved, whether it be by wheelbarrow, bins, bags or whatever. Intransigence from any quarter will not solve the problems.

There was always going to be a period of teething troubles but we are experiencing missed collections, collections on the wrong days, no collections at all and all manner of other difficulties through trying to do too much at once with the collectors at the forefront of the blame and through no fault of their own.

Cllr Terry Justice

Ashton Gardens

Chadwell Heath.