Gornal News & Goings On

NEWS

What a load of rubbish! There was much mutual back-patting from our elected officials recently, when a plan by Wolverhampton Council to charge Dudley residents £3 to use their Anchor Lane refuse tip was dropped at the last minute. "A deal has been done by one to one discussions between the two lead members for the environment, Cllrs Karen Shakespeare and Andrew Johnson", an 'extremely pleased' Councillor David Caunt told the Dudley News. "Joint management of the tip will mean the northern end of the borough will once again be supplied with a facility to dump their rubbish". A triumph for our leaders' tough negotiating stance with its bigger neighbour? Hardly - we understand that Dudley Council have agreed to give Wolverhampton £120,000 a year for the 'privilege'! So we'll still be paying to use something we used to get for free, but through our Council Tax. Not so bad for us in North Dudley of course, because the £3 per person burden will be spread out amongst the people of Stourbridge, Halesowen etc., who will never have cause to use the service. A whiff of party politics in this decision, perhaps? This cross border charging is not prevalent across the country - in fact it appears that Dudley is more or less unique in caving in to its colleagues across the divide. Strange, when one considers that 1500 Wolverhampton school children use Dudley schools...

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