Tip booking system was a pre-election headache

Scrapping the tip booking system for cars and binning a proposal for three-weekly general waste collections in Shropshire has put smiles on the faces of residents.

The added layer of bureaucracy to drop an old TV off at one of the five recycling centres was widely unpopular, especially in an older county where many residents still prefer to use the phone to book services.

The U-turn, just four months after it was introduced to find savings, took many by surprise.

After years of cut, cut, cut, residents were shocked to see Shropshire Council returning a service that almost nobody wanted axed in the first place.

The cynic could point to the fact that we are just 11 weeks away from council elections, with the Conservative-run administration holding on by a thread, both politically and financially.

Sticking with a very unpopular decision that would only save £200,000 a year would certainly be in the minds of voters as they head to the polls on 1 May.

You only have to read comments on social media to get a sense of how unhappy residents were with the booking system, especially those who were booking by phone and waiting long periods of time to speak with an operator.

I have had conversations with Conservative councillors who were getting grief from residents over the system, and those concerns were being fed back to council leaders.

The Liberal Democrats' petition to have it scrapped was further pressure to bring it to an end.

The petition, which was available on the Lib Dems' website rather than the council's official online ePetition site, was sign by almost 6,000 people, although we do not know if they were Shropshire residents or people that worked or studied in the county.

Either way, a promise to scrap the booking system would have been a gift for all opposition parties heading in to the election period.

The council's portfolio holder for waste, Ian Nellins, denied that May's election swayed their decision.

He said they were listening to people's concerns and wanted to make life as easy as possible for residents.

What will become clearer in the coming few weeks is how they intend to find the savings to fill the financial hole left by the booking system and three-weekly residual waste collections, the latter of which would have saved the council £2m a year.

Another mammoth task of finding tens of millions of pounds of savings awaits whichever party, or parties, form the next administration in May.

The exchange of taking more money from residents while delivering fewer services will continue, regardless of the people in charge of Shropshire Council for the next five years.

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