Derbyshire council to cut tip opening hours and use number plate recognition cameras

In a bid to save half-a-million pounds a year, cash-strapped Derbyshire County Council is set to bring in a number of changes to its nine household waste and recycling centres. These will be voted on by the Conservative cabinet on Thursday, March 14, with the matter to then pass to full council for a final sign-off.

It owns nine sites in Ashbourne, Bolsover, Buxton, Chesterfield, Darley Dale, Glossop, Ilkeston, Loscoe, and Newhall, with the proposed changes not affecting Derby City Council’s Raynesway tip.

The authority announced it was looking at a range of changes to its tips last July with the potential to save up to £1.8 million over seven years – if all its then plans were to go ahead.

Following a consultation with 2,876 respondents the council has made a number of changes and its controlling cabinet is now set to approve a selection of those measures. The council is set to reduce the operating hours of all nine of its centres from 8.30am to 6pm to 9.30am to 5pm, saying this would save around £261,000 a year.

Meanwhile, it is looking to charge £4 for each car tyre and £6 for each asbestos sheet, aiming to bring in a further £69,000 per year.

The authority is to trial a change allowing small businesses such as sole traders to deposit waste, at a cost, at its tips in Ashbourne and Bolsover, to assess its viability and any teething problems, with an aim to bring in £40,000 through the pilot.

Alongside this, the council is set to bring in automatic number plate recognition cameras at its nine tips to log vehicles attending the site. This is a move to ensure that only Derbyshire residents would be allowed to use tips in the county, with residents to one-off register their vehicles in advance before a visit by filling out a form online or by calling on the phone.

The council says its tips process 85,000 tonnes of waste and recycling each year and that the amount of waste processed has increased by a third in recent years, between 2018 and 2022.

Glossop and Ashbourne have seen the amount of waste they process double in that period, (107 and 98 per cent respectively) with Newhall seeing its waste processed increase by 50 per cent.

It says its sites received 2.5 times the amount of waste per person when compared with waste collected at Derby City Council’s facility at Raynesway.

The only significant difference, a county council report said, is that Derby requires people visiting the tip to book before coming and to provide proof of residency in the city. Derbyshire residents can also use the Raynesway tip.

County council officials said Derbyshire’s tips see seven times the amount of asbestos and tyres brought for processing than Derby – when this is broken down per person – with Staffordshire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire either charging for these collections or not accepting them.

Processing a higher level of asbestos and tyres cost the county council up to £800,000 a year, which a report says is “in effect, a subsidy paid by Derbyshire to private businesses and surrounding councils”.