By John Wimperis, Local Democracy Reporter: 41 fines have been issued to businesses in central Bath since controversial new bin rules came into force.
Liberal Democrat-run Bath and North East Somerset Council introduced rules in October requiring businesses to label waste with their name and store it in new gull-proof bags. Businesses were also banned from putting out evening waste before 6pm, despite strong objections from businesses where staff usually leave at 5pm.
By April, the council had issued 41 fixed penalty notices to businesses found to have repeatedly breached the rules. Two of the businesses fined had previously formally complained about the 6pm rule — a small but significant change which one shopkeeper called “entirely unworkable”.
Shops could previously put their bins out for the evening waste collection between 5pm and 8.45pm, but the new rule changed this window to 6pm to 8.30pm. The council’s own analysis warned that it could cost shops which shut at 5pm over £3,000 a year in additional wages for someone to stay for another hour just to put the bins out.
Backbench councillors challenged the rule when it was proposed and called-in the plan to a council scrutiny panel last year. The Liberal Democrat-dominated committee voted to dismiss the call-in, in a vote which largely went down party lines, but requested that a report on the impact of the policy come back to the committee.
Now that report shows that there was initially a large number of breaches of the rules, but they quickly reduced. In the first week of the new rules in October, 61 businesses put their waste out without their name on it and 43 businesses put it out at the wrong time. By the seventh week, there was only one instance of each breach.
Throughout the first seven weeks, the council said that enforcement teams carried out “targeted education” to support businesses to adopt the new rules. This included tagging waste, speaking to businesses verbally where possible, or sending an “educational letter informing of risk of fine.”
An estimated 1,126 businesses are within the central Bath area affected by the new rules. 80 businesses objected to the rules before they were introduced, and 21 businesses have complained to the council about the policy since.
The report will go before a meeting of the council’s climate emergency and sustainability scrutiny panel in Bath Guildhall on Thursday July 9.
Image: The evening business waste collection going on while people enjoy a drink at 6.30pm one evening in Bath (Image: John Wimperis)
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