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What a waste

Vic Barlow
4/ 6/2008

IF YOU were planning to sell a business, would it be useful to increase prices by 12 per cent, keep your customers in the dark and make the business appear as profitable as possible before maximising your selling price?

That’s exactly what Macclesfield Borough Council has done with its commercial waste collection, which serves a lot of hard pressed local traders.

MBC say they were "not obliged to let customers know", which is like emigrating without paying your property tax and saying you were "not obliged" to tell.

As it’s a public body financed by public funds, you’d have thought some sense of duty might have prevailed. They certainly were "not obliged" to raise all their prices by 12pc, but they did.

Not only did MBC plan to keep the sale secret, they refused to disclose the selling price, saying the deal will "prove more cost effective for customers". There are a lot of local businesses that would like me to ask how?

How will a 12pc price hike and a clandestine deal with an undisclosed out of town contractor prove more "cost effective" for customers?

What happens to MBC staff when commercial waste collection is finally handed over? The only way it can be "cost effective" is for the council to slash the workforce. How many staff will be made redundant? Why weren’t the details known before MBC recruited an army of traffic wardens?

This secretive, under-the-table manoeuvre is not what we expect of an organisation funded by taxpayers. Such cynicism may be good enough for the big supermarkets, who are a law unto themselves, but for a local council, dependent on public support – it stinks.

The views expressed on this page are Vic Barlow's and not necessarily those of the Express