Residents wanting to use the Crowborough Household Waste and Recycling site will have to book a slot to visit, the county council has agreed today.
Cllr Claire Dowling, the council’s Lead Member for Transport and Environment made the decision at a meeting this morning – despite thousands of people opposing the plans.
The council says the new booking system for all of the county’s waste sites will improve queues, deter business and trade waste which should not be disposed at the taxpayer’s expense, and ensure only East Sussex residents get to use the facilities without charge. No date has been fixed yet for the scheme to be implemented.
Huge majority against the plans
The decision came despite a big public response to the council’s consultation. Of the more than 5,000 who replied, 91 per cent responded negatively. Officers admitted that 72 percent, or 4,352, responded “extremely negatively”. There was more public response about the Crowborough site than the others.
But in recommending Cllr Dowling should agree to the new scheme, officers said that in other areas of the country where people had been opposed to booking systems, they had soon become accustomed to it. More than 50 per cent of councils now operate some kind of booking system for their sites, they added.
Officers also insisted that a Govt report in 2023 showed there was no evidence of a rise in fly-tipping linked to the introduction of booking systems. Neither Kent nor West Sussex had seen an increase in fly tipping when they introduced their booking systems, they added.