Talking Rubbish Again
I’ve often written about changes to the recycling policy at Kirklees and was pleased the new changes have been implemented and hopefully, everyone now has a sticker on their green bins which outlines the type of materials that can now be included like the one here. Clearly, I still believe there is more than can be done and am pushing to bring forward the timescales for both the return of doorstep glass collections and also food waste collection, an initiative in the Government’s recent Environment Bill.
The Government has also this week announced plans (& funding) to remove the ban on the collection of DIY waste at Council Tips which has often been raised with me and is something I & my Party colleagues have consistently opposed the Council on. I am grateful for the lobbying that our MP was involved in to bring about this change as the ban did have an adverse impact on the amount of flytipping and I await to see how quickly Kirklees will respond to this.
I do seem to have spent a fair bit of my time talking about issues associated with the climate challenge we face and as always I look for ways in which we can locally play a part. To this end and as part of the follow on from the COP26 Glasgow meeting I met recently with a couple of members of our WI to discuss ways in which we could work together here locally to make some practical changes and also show support for the bigger initiatives. I also had a call earlier on today with the Council Officer who is charged with developing the electric charging infrastructure across the district.
I had challenged the Council, saying that there was little evidence of any plans to extend any public charging points in the entire Kirkburton Ward, never mind just our village and we have explored a number of locations, some, of which are Council owned like Cliffe House or Cherry Trees, look like suitable locations, as does the car park on Lea Head. I also talked about partnering perhaps with the two Health Centres locally which have large car parking capacity as well as a number of other locations across the broader ward that I represent.
Support for Electric Vehicles
Talking transport, I also had a meeting last week with the Highways team, looking at road improvement plans and used the opportunity to push again for why my request for the Zebra crossing to be repainted, along with the one in Shelley, had not yet been actioned. As a result, I now have an agreement that they will repaint the white lining on the A629 all the way from the start of Shelley up to the Sovereign junction, including the two zebras and road junctions. This was more than I was initially asking for so a good result, even if it may be a couple of months before the work is carried out due to needing to do the work at night because of the volume of traffic that uses the road.
I also am planning on holding a public meeting in June to look again at speeding issues in the village, with both Council Officers and the Police in attendance. I had been asked to hold this after the local elections were completed so that there could be no issues about potential political bias and unfortunately diary clashes mean it will be June before this can be held but I will advertise details of this in next month’s magazine.
See you next month,
John
