A councillor has branded Hertfordshire County Council’s plans to stop Cambridgeshire residents using a recycling centre on the county border as “silly”.
Cambridgeshire County Council plans to pay Hertfordshire so that people in the county can continue to use the Royston Recycling Centre.
The authority is hoping to reach an agreement with Hertfordshire for the cross border use of Thriplow and Royston Household Recycling Centres.
Hertfordshire County Council announced earlier this year it planned to stop people who did not live in its area from using its recycling centres due to “significant cost pressures”.
Hertfordshire County Council has been approached for comment.
Cambridgeshire is now planning to agree a payment to its neighbour to allow people to continue using the Royston site, whilst also allowing people from Hertfordshire to use the Thriplow Recycling Centre.
A report to the county council’s environment and green investment committee meeting this week (July 13) said more people from Cambridgeshire used the Royston site (52.78 per cent), compared to the number of people from Hertfordshire who used the Thriplow site (12.24 per cent).
The difference in use is why Cambridgeshire is planning to agree a payment to Hertfordshire to compensate for the increased costs it faces.
How much this payment might be has not been made available publicly.
The county council is also planning to conduct its own research about who uses its sites from neighbouring areas, which is expected to cost £15,000.
Ward councillors representing areas on the Hertfordshire border thanked the county council for pursuing a cross border agreement that would allow people to continue using the Royston site, highlighting that for many this was closer than a Cambridgeshire run facility.
Councillor Nick Gay said it was “regrettable” that Hertfordshire County Council had made the decision to stop people from outside its county using the recycling centre, and said he would like to see the neighbouring authority “stop being so silly”.
Cllr Gay said: “The sums of money involved are not great and it seems to me that it is spending a huge amount of officer and other time and also money.
“I think it is clear that this issue exists not just for Cambridgeshire and Hertfordshire, but for Suffolk, Norfolk, Peterborough, and Bedfordshire as well, and I am sure this is a zero sum game I am sure the out of county people using our facilities and vice versa just cancel itself out.”
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Councillor Ros Hathorn said she would like the county council to continue to review the situation after an agreement is reached.
The committee unanimously backed the principle of exploring and putting in place reciprocal access and cost sharing arrangements with Hertfordshire County Council, and supported research being undertaken to look at the usage of the authority’s own waste facilities.
A previous report produced by Hertfordshire said more people who did not live in the county were using the Royston facility than people who did live in the county.
It said across all of its recycling centres the net usage by out-of-county people was “in excess” of 20 per cent, and that this amount was increasing.
The leadership have previously said that implementing a policy restricting access to people living in Hertfordshire only would save the authority around £450,000 a year.
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