Resident unhappy with no pedestrian access rule for the waste centre in Berwick

Monica Menis recently attempted to take a few batteries and light bulbs to the facility at the Ramparts Business Park on foot.

She said she was told that she could not use the site as she was a pedestrian, nor could she hand the light bulbs to the attendant as there are CCTV cameras in operation and they are not allowed to handle the rubbish themselves, and that there were no other vehicles or passengers there at the time.

She also said that she could not find anywhere in the local area that takes recycling for items such as small appliances, bulbs, cartridges and batteries.

Monica added: “I wrote to the council asking where these facilities were and suggested they tweak the regs so that the odd pedestrian can drop stuff off. To my amazement, I got back a long bureaucratic e-mail justifying their inability to allow this on grounds of risk and safety, as dictated by SUEZ who are the company managing the waste sites.

“The entire reasoning is disingenuous and occasionally spurious.

“They claim that the sites were created with vehicles in mind and that to redesign it for pedestrians would be costly and impractical. This is incorrect.

“The sites were created with vehicles and passengers in mind. There is already a protocol for vehicles with pedestrians. So it’s just a minor tweak. Not a major re-design.

“They claim that allowing pedestrians would increase the risk within the site. This might be true if it was an unregulated trooping in of masses of pedestrians, but in fact there is an attendant who already manages vehicle flow. It’s just a matter of a small change to vehicle/pedestrian management. Also, it would hardly be an army of pedestrians queuing up. Most people have cars. It is a small trickle of pedestrians at most.”

A county council spokesperson said: “SUEZ, our waste management contractor responsible for operating the HWRCs, has a duty as a responsible operator to put measures in place to limit risk and this is one of those measures.

“Customer safety is our top priority and the HWRC sites were not designed with pedestrian access in mind. The nature of service operations means there are unacceptable risks in allowing pedestrians to come onto the site by foot.

“Historically, there have been accidents and near miss incidents across the network of HWRCs involving vehicles and pedestrians and most of the sites are not designed with footpaths or pedestrian gates from the main entrance.

“Our HWRCs are primarily provided for the deposit of large items that cannot be placed into household bins and would be too large/heavy for a pedestrian to carry.

“Batteries can be recycled using the designated tubes located in all large supermarkets or battery retailers, and a many number of electrical stores offer a take back scheme. We also provide a bulky waste collection service for larger items.

“There is also a retailer take-back scheme and residents can use a handy ‘recycling locator’ at the www.recycleyourelectricals.org.uk/about-material-focus/weee-regulations website – with several retail outlets listed for Berwick.”