9 July 2014
At ECC Full Council held yesterday, July 8th, at County Hall, Cllr. James Abbott (Green, Witham Northern), tabled a Written Question to the Cabinet Member for Waste and Recycling seeking an assurance from him that Witham Recycling Centre would stay open at least for the duration of the current administration (eg until 2017).
A leaked report published previously in the local press had shown a scoping option for Recycling Centres in Essex with the Perry Road, Witham site identified for closure.
In his response to Cllr. Abbott, the Cabinet Member, Cllr. Roger Walters, stated that the Witham site would stay open for the duration of the current administration, and was challenged to repeat this by Cllr. Abbott to confirm the assurance.
An exchange surrounded this issue as the Cabinet Member had refused to give a written reply (unlike for the rest of the 21 written questions which did all have written replies from Cabinet Members). His verbal reply gave the no-closure assurance, but he also claimed that the Greens were "wasting council time" in asking the question in the first place.
However, prior to his answer at the meeting, Cllr. Walters would only say that there were “no plans “ for closure and at the previous Full Council meeting on 13th May 2014, in response to a verbal question from Cllr. Abbott on this issue (Minute 22, question 5), Cllr. Walters stated that “the council was reviewing all its services and therefore he could not give such a commitment”.
Cllr. James Abbott said
“We welcome this long drawn out assurance. Cllr. Walters may not like being asked these questions, but until we got a firm assurance that this administration would not close the Witham site in this term (ie to at least 2017), we were entitled to continue putting those questions. A well known politician’s answer is “we have no plans.”
Now that we have that assurance, residents in Witham and surrounding villages can have a higher degree of confidence that Cllr. Walters and his Tory colleagues will keep the Witham site open, and that the current excellent range of services there will continue.
However we will continue to monitor this issue closely in any future review. It is an accepted principle that one administration cannot bind the next, so we may yet have this battle again in years to come.”
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