Hopes for changes to new Highland Council waste rules
Register for free to read more of the latest local news. It's easy and will only take a moment.
A CITY councillor is hoping to get restrictions over the use of large trailers at recycling centres overturned at a meeting of Highland Council next month.
Andrew Jarvie, Conservative councillor for Inverness South, has put forward a motion proposing a review of the new regulations, which were only introduced on February 3.
His motion claims that when councillors agreed to the new waste policy it was understood restrictions would apply to large loads of commercial material and not to household and garden waste.
He said: “I am just asking for household and garden waste to be exempted. At the end of the day people who are regularly disposing of waste from their gardens, and happen to have a trailer, should not be discriminated against.”
Cllr Jarvie said there were ways of identifying commercial users such as the use of automatic number plate recognition systems.
He felt there would be a lot of support for the proposal from his fellow councillors.
“It’s been quite the topic and most of them see this as an overreach,” he said. “I certainly hope it is overturned.”
Culloden businessman Rory Haigh spoke to the Courier last month about how he would no longer be able to use his double-axle trailer to transport his own garden waste to recycling facilities.
He said he fully supported Cllr Jarvie’s proposal for a review.
“I think it’s great what he is doing,” he said. “I’d be most interested to see what the outcome is. They will have to properly implement the committee’s decision and withdraw the restriction of what we can take to the dump.”
The council introduced the new regulations in a bid to save more than £300,000 over a period of two years.
It was argued that most people with large trailers tended to have them for commercial practices.
* Click here to read more news.
