Thousands oppose local tip closures

Thousands of people have signed a petition against Cheshire East Council’s decision to close three local tips.

Cheshire East Council is planning to close sites in Bollington, Poynton and Middlewich.

The organiser of the petition said there were lots of concerns around fly-tipping in particular.

The council said it would continue to review household waste recycling centres and was planning to introduce a mobile provision in the affected areas.

The authority has seven household waste recycling centres in Alsager, Bollington, Crewe, Knutsford, Macclesfield, Middlewich and Poynton.

In its 2024/25 budget, it approved plans for an “emergency reduction” of household waste recycling centres to four “core” sites in Alsager, Crewe, Knutsford and Macclesfield.

The sites are set to close on 1 April, ahead of a formal review of its household waste recycling centres later this year.

Trevor Priestman, chairman of the Macclesfield Liberal Democrats, started an online petition against the closures.

“There are lots of concerns raised on the petition, especially about fly-tipping,” he said.

Mr Priestman said that the closure of the tip in Congleton in 2021 led to a 34% increase in fly-tipping in that area, according to statistics from the town council.

The Congleton site closed after its lease expired.

Fly-tipping costs the council about £239,000 a year to deal with.

“If we see rises along those lines any benefit that they’ll try and get from these closures financially is going to be taken up on sorting out and clearing up those incidents,” Mr Priestman said.

“Hopefully it’ll make the council listen.”

He said the council “haven’t listened” after a public consultation which had 1,000 responses.

“This petition has got six times more respondents,” he added.

“It’s time the council listened to the people who elected them.”

Mick Warren, chairman of the council’s environment and communities committee, said: “As a mitigation we are proposing to introduce, on a trial basis, a mobile household waste recycling provision in those towns”.

He said the council would “continue to review” the provision of waste sites in the area “as we seek to deliver a service that enables residents to recycle and dispose of their waste responsibly but is also within the limits of what is possible financially”.

Council leader Sam Corcoran said when something was closed it was “always going to be an unpopular message to put out there”.

“But we are forced to make difficult decisions because of the financial crisis facing the whole country,” he said.

A review into household waste recycling centres across the area is due to be out in the autumn.