Tip permit!

[Jim K..]

To be replaced by a charge at the tip :-)

[R D S]

Rocked up at the tip yesterday, with a few big pieces of plasterboard and a couple of croc tubs of s**te only to be turned away because i've no permit.

Apparently since Feb you've to apply to the council for a permit, with which I will be able to dispose of 10 x 25k bags per year. A 25k bag of plasterboard? I've to break it into ####ing bits?

Less than one bag per month on average? I've a fairly big project on.

In a town that (like many/most others?) has a fly tipping problem.

Pure genius.

[Brian Gaff]

Well here we get them sent to us, but the problem is I have no car but I still have to pay them for a garden waste bin nonetheless.

I think that if you are doing more than a certain amount you are deemed commercial these days and have to hire a company to remove it for you who has the required paperwork. Many people tend to use neighbours to get around it. Brian

[Tim+]

Did you rock up in a white van or other obvious trade persons vehicle?

Tim

[Andy Burns]

Round here it costs £3 to dispose of a 1.8mx0.9m sheet of plasterboard, that only costs £5.50 to buy in B&Q ... alternatively you crumble it up and sneak it into the wheelie bin over a few weeks.

[Martin Brown]

Sadly the reason they have imposed this restriction on plasterboard is to stop it going into general waste, although it has had exactly the opposite effect. My lot you have to dispose of it by being weighed in and out over a weighbridge shared with laden skips on beat-waste trucks.

Apparently in the reducing environment of a refuse tip the sulphate gets reduced to hydrogen sulphide and has been causing them problems.

[Andy Burns]

I'm aware of that, they used to have a separate plasterboard skip at the tip, and I always made use of it, keeping it separate

yep.

[NY]

Some years ago I dug up a large pile (maybe several hundredweight) of sandstone sheets (naturally occurring, in the sandy soil). I took most of the smaller pieces to the tip in refuse bags, at a time when it was still free to dispose of rubble as long as you didn't take more that n bags per month - so I took n bags per month to each of several tips in the area (nothing wrong with playing the system).

The rest ended up in a large pile at the bottom of the garden. By that stage, tips were charging colossal sums of money - we worked out that it would have cost over £100 to dispose of it. We could have hired a skip, which would probably have been cheaper, but it was overkill for something that would barely cover the bottom of a skip. The official explanation for what people should do with their waste rubble was "advertise locally to see if anyone wants rubble for filling potholes in farm tracks". Oh yeah. I bet you'd get a *lot* of takers...

So my wife build a "dry stone wall" of the slabs, alongside part of the hedge beside a brick compost heap, where we had problems with local dogs getting in when their owners let them off the lead while going for a walk along the unofficial "footpath" at the bottom of the garden.

The concept of paying to dispose of any waste, over and above normal council tax, seems fundamentally wrong when *I* transport it to the tip and don't even want someone else to collect it.

We were also expected to pay extra if we wanted the council to collect garden waste. Initially it was free. The council sounded aghast when I asked them to collect the bin, and said that we'd take our garden waste to the tip ourselves for free.

[R D S]

No, car, all 'inert' waste needs this permit apparently, domestic or not.

[Steve Walker]

Our council introduced a charge for garden waste two years ago. We kept the bin though, as it is still used for food waste and cut flowers are also allowed.

As we didn't pay for the garden waste removal service, we didn't get a sticker and so couldn't put such waste out in the bin - so I bought an old style, round, black bin and just took that along to the tip every so often.

I am assuming that they had a lot of people do the same and got a lot less money in than they expected, as the charge is being dropped from June.

SteveW

[alan_m]

My local tip requires proof of address before being allowed in. They accept a photo driving licence with an appropriate address. They make no check on how often you use it but do ask about what you are dumping - mainly to direct you to specialised skips for certain types of waste.

[Dave Liquorice]

Cumbria County Council:

Permit required if you are disposing of general houshold waste and drive any sized van, a pickup or use a twin axle trailer less than 3m in length. Single use, last a month, free.

Permit required if you are disposing of recycables and drive any sized van, a pickup or use a twin axle trailer less than 3m in length. Multiple use, last a year, free.

No limits on quantity of waste, other than that imposed by only allowing a single general waste trip per month in a van/pickup/2 axle trailer.

No permits, no limits, no charges if you turn up in a car.

Northumberland County Council:

Each household has a maximum of 12, single use, vehicle permits per year (vehicles loosely as above), free.

There is a limit of 6 cubic yards of "DIY waste", per household per year some of which is chargeable. £2/per bag (bag being the size that

25 kg of sand comes in). There is also charging based on vehicle (inc cars) and how full they are for "DIY waste".

Both are of course only supposed to be used by residents of the appropiate county. Stuff that, we live in Cumbria (just) but go to Hexham (Northumberland) far more than anywhere else in Cumbria, guess which HWRC we use...

[NY]

We used to live near Malton, and the North Yorkshire tip in Malton and the York City tip in Strensall were more or less equidistant so I used both... until York started checking for ID and I was turned away because I wasn't a resident of York City "county". As an aside, even many locals cannot get their brains around the concept of York being in a county of its own, and not being part of North, West or East Yorkshire or the three Ridings that preceded those 1974 counties.

It is interesting how some tips have staff who are far more willing to help unload cars than at other tips. When I used to live in Oxfordshire, the staff, especially at Redbridge, wouldn't lift a finger to help, and were there only to try to catch people out who were putting things in the wrong skips (*). In North Yorkshire, Malton, Thornton-le-Dale and Wombleton (**) usually leave people to manage on their own, though more recently they are willing to help if you ask them. Leyburn, the nearest tip to where we live at the moment, are very willing to help: sometimes I've barely reversed up to the skips when the boot is opened and one of the cheery staff is starting to empty my trugs of garden waste. On one occasion I had to stop him from taking something that *I* knew was not to be thrown away, but happened to be in the boot; I should have anticipated what would happen and put in on the back seat instead...

(*) I once asked "Where do I put this?" and was greeted with a shrug and a grunt, so I said "Thank you for being so helpful" and put it in the most sensible one. At that point, he yelled at me for putting it in the wrong one - he kept going on and on, repeating himself many times over. I pointed out that I'd asked him and he hadn't deigned to give me a sensible answer. "You should have known" was his answer.

(**) I kid you not: I love the idea of Wombles of Wombleton collecting "things that everyday folk leave behind" ;-)

[Jethro_uk]

In 1999, when I worked for Avery, we had a couple of English councils approach us to devise a system to allow residents to tip, but non- residents to get weighed and charged. They had a sackful of EU cash in grants to deliver a POC system and were keen it went to the Worlds premier weighing company - and an English one to boot.

Management and sales team decided there wasn't enough margin on the load cells and declined to quote. That was the better part of £250,000 walking out the door.

What was particularly galling was we already had the software and hardware to do the job in place and working at several sites.

There was a companion project to put RFID cars into wheelie bins and weigh as they were tipped, which would have allowed councils to charge for households using over <whatever> tonnes/year. Again we had the software and hardware working on existing projects.

Avery, of course was owned by GEC. The fact you don't hear those initials these days is probably no surprise given the business acumen of the various companies that made up the giant.

[Steve Walker]

The staff at one of our local tips are less than helpful too. The tip has bays painted on the ground, at an angle. If it is busy (which it usually is) and you have to reverse in with a trailer, the bay is not long enough. At quieter times I can simply swing across a number of bays, pull forward and stop with the car at the front of the bay and the trailer at a sharp angle across the bottom of the bay and the one next to it.

One busy day, I had one have a right go at me for having my trailer stick a couple of feet into the walkway, narrowing it to about 3 feet - he just couldn't accept that if I'd stopped any further forward, no vehicle would have been able to pass the front of my car and the whole place would have simply locked solid and that I'd chosen the better of two options.

SteveW

[Dave Liquorice]

Best to call their bluff, get back in and say where do you want me to park? When it all clogs up take the time to expalin to the drivers that are obstructed that you had left room but where told to park how you are by the site operative. Of course all this friendly chat with other drivers means your not unloading...

Also compalin about the layout to the council and site operator (probably a private company). Frequently the layout of places misses basic common sense facts, like not everyone can reverse a trailer into a parking bay.

[Steve Walker]

I have been know to act like that on some occassions, but I don't really like to cause trouble for innocent people.

I did do and yes, it is a private company.

I can reverse it fortunately, but that becomes impossible if the load is low and I can't then see it at all unless its already turned far out of line. I will get around to welding at least one and possibly two tubes on at some point, specifically to hold corner marker poles.

SteveW

[NY]

My local tip has bays marked at 45 degrees to the way you come in, so you drive past a space and reverse into it. One day I was there and a guy in a big 4x4 drove in sideways, across about 4 parking spaces, instead of reversing into one of the bays. I was watching him carefully because he nearly drove into the side of my car. The staff just stood there and did nothing - not even a discrete word in his ear "would you like to park properly in one of the bays so other people can park next to you". But when someone else reversed into a bay next him, and had to straddle one of the lines slightly in order to avoid his rear end, the staff gave *him* a bollocking for not parking properly. Talk about double standards...

[NY]

I've seen people come in towing trailers, unhitch the trailer and trundle it into the space resting on the jockey wheel, then park the car next to it. Seems a fairly sensible way of getting round the fact that they can't reverse the trailer, especially when there isn't room to swing the car out to get the trailer pointing correctly into the bay. I have the greatest sympathy, because I cannot reverse anything articulated to save my life: I can't even reverse in a straight line without the trailer starting inexorably to swing one way or the other without being able to correct it, never mind being able to do anything fancy like pointing the trailer/caravan at an angle to the direction I was driving in to fit through a gateway or into a parking bay. I'd definitely be one of the naff "unhitch and manoeuvre by hand" brigade :-)

I saw one tip that was very sensibly laid out: as you approached, the road divided into lots of parallel sections, each with a skip next to it and each with its own exit back to the common exit road. That meant that no reversing was needed, and no car's reversing impeded the exit of any other car, apart from the merging into a single exit lane which was consistently marked out so every lane gave way to the one on its right, like roundabout rules. And the ramps where the cars parked were raised off the ground so the lip of the skip was only slightly above "ground" level - you let the car drive up to the correct height rather than having to walk up steps beside each skip to get to the height to throw things into the skip.

The worst was Malton tip where there was no way for the lorries to remove the skips while cars were driving in and out, so every time a skip was full and a lorry arrived to take it away, they had to close the tip and clear all the cars out while the lorry reversed up, picked up the skip, stopped for a cup of tea and a chat with his mates (*) and then drove out. Meanwhile a long queue of cars had to wait on the entry road until the tip re-opened, queuing on a minor road and then round the corner onto a more major road, which blocked access of all through traffic, and also all traffic wanting to get to the rest of the industrial estate.

(*) I'm not joking: I did once see a driver stop for a natter with his mates after he'd finished picking up the skip.

[Steve Walker]

Unfortunately my trailer has no jockey wheel. I could add one, but as it has no brakes, it won't stay where its put then. I can manouvre it by hand, but when it is heavily loaded, I don't want to put too much strain on my badly arthritic knees.

Some people find it easy, some find it hard, most struggle but can get the hang of it with practice. Once you can get the hang of thinking which direction you need to push the nose of the trailer and hence which direction you want to reverse the car, you can set off properly. After that it is just a case of making small corrections and switching to following the trailer round rather than steering the opposite way as you do to start the turn.

A caravan is far easier than a small trailer because the axle is so much further back from the hitch and so it goes off course much more slowly and makes overcorrection less of a problem too.

Sounds good. Ours has the skips all side by side along the whole length of the site, with parking spaces angled, so reversing is required. The whole area used by cars, plus walkways between the skips is raised up. The skips for large appliances actually have a removeable, chain section of the walkway fence and a fold down drawbridge so that you don't have to lift a washing machine up off the (provided) sack truck.

When a skip is full at our tip, they close the gates to the walkways either side and open the gates to another one. Meanwhile the wheeled excavator packs the first one down using a giant, steel, toothed, roller. If there is enough space, they reopen the gates, otherwise they swap the skip for an empty one. There is plenty of space for a number of extra full or empty skips to be stored and for multiple wagons to be in the yard at the same time.

That's the sort of thing that gets me going over to them and pointing out that they are holding a lot of people up.

SteveW