Crewe tip, success for residents – Proposed 7 day booking system at household waste recyling centre HWRC scrapped!

I’m pleased to share some positive news following the council’s Scrutiny Committee meeting on 28th July.

I formally challenged the decision made back in January to introduce a 7 day booking system at Crewe Household Waste Recycling Centre, the tip at Pyms Lane.  The Scrutiny Committee is the process where councillors can review and challenge important council decisions.

I led this challenge after many residents contacted me with concerns about the proposed changes. For many people, visiting the tip is a simple and essential task, but introducing a booking system every day would have created another barrier, especially for those who are not online. This was even more of a concern because residents cannot book by phone at weekends.

A big thank you to Cllr Allen Gage for jointly supporting the challenge and speaking alongside me at the committee.

I’m really pleased that the committee supported our concerns and has recommended that the decision to make residents book seven days a week should be scrapped.

The council told us that fly tipping locally has recently fallen by around 20%, which is welcome news. However, that short-term improvement does not tell the whole story.

When you look at the longer-term trend across Cheshire East, fly tipping is still around 3.5 times higher than it was in 2012, showing there is still much more work to do.

At a time when fly tipping remains such a problem, I do not believe making it harder for residents to access the tip is the answer. We should be making it easier for people to dispose of waste properly.

After other recycling centres across Cheshire East closed, an unpopular weekend booking system was introduced at Crewe. As more people started using the tip during the week instead, the council’s answer was to make everyone book every day. I didn’t think that was the right approach.

Rather than adding more barriers, I suggested that we should look at ways to improve the site and make it work better for residents.

My recommendations included looking at the road layout on Pyms Lane to help improve traffic flow, reduce queues and make the recycling centre operate more effectively and efficiently.

I’m pleased that councillors from across the committee supported these recommendations. As a result, we’ll now be meeting on site to look at the road layout and discuss these ideas further.

Let’s hope these ideas are listened to and we can deliver a better experience for residents using the site.

Thank you to everyone who contacted me, shared your experiences and supported this challenge. Your feedback helped strengthen the case, and I’m really pleased we’ve secured this positive outcome for Crewe residents.