Local Liberal Democrat campaigner, Penny Goodman, is calling on Leeds Labour to sort out the bins in Headingley after receiving complaints from residents in the Ash Road area that the new opt-in recycling scheme, brought in by the Labour Councillors, is not working.

Green bin collections were stopped and residents who wished to sort their recycling were told that they could request recycling bags. But on Chapel Street the old green bins have been left abandoned, blocking the pavement and causing problems for people with disabilities and parents with pushchairs. Some residents have also not received recycling bags despite requesting them several times.

Bins blocking the pavement in Chapel Street

Labour-run Leeds City Council is letting Headingley down by not ensuring that the new scheme is implemented properly across the whole of the pilot area.

Local residents have also been telling us that they would like to see doorstep glass and food waste recycling in their area. Liberal Democrat Councillors in other parts of the City implemented a successful doorstep food waste recycling pilot, which we want to see rolled out across Leeds.

Update: after publishing this story in our Focus leaflet, we reported the bin problems in Chapel Street to the Environment and Housing team, and were told that this street is not part of the Ash Road opt-in recycling pilot after all. Yet the local residents we spoke to believed that they were included in the pilot, and the suspension of their regular green bin collections suggests their bin collection teams thought so too. So the real problem here is poor communication around the pilot scheme, leading to residents and collection teams believing one thing and Environment and Housing believing another.