MADAM,

How many readers have been inconvenienced when taking rubbish to the Monmouth recycling centre only to find that the gates are closed for anything up to an hour?

I experienced this on a number of occasions recently. As a result I met with an officer of the council and the facility manager at Mitchel Troy and they are just as frustrated as I am.

I have now monitored the closures over the last two weeks and found that it has been closed 22 times in the first week and 27 times in the second week of which seven were this Saturday and Sunday.

These closures can be between 30 and 60 minutes and are necessary to allow skips to be transferred/ moved or for compressing existing skips to make more room. As I understand it the site is too small to facilitate customers at the same time as large lorries because of health and safety. This does seem very reasonable but what are our councillors doing in response to this? Very little it would appear!

Monmouth has grown in terms of housing stock and continues to grow, if anything it is not growing fast enough for MCC to achieve its housing target. What actions have been taken to take into account the growing number of users which combined with regulatory requirements to provide a greener waste solution make this a difficult question? What funding options have been considered, surely a contribution from builders of new houses needs to be brought in? If 150 new houses are built each year and a contribution of £3000/ house is made by the builder it will generate sufficient contribution for a new facility. Further more, the council already owns the highways site next door which might be better utilised as the waste facility.

27 closures in one week is far too many and our council needs to address this problem as a matter of urgency. The last thing we want in Monmouthshire is an increase in fly tipping because the waste facility isn’t open enough.    

Nigel Williams

(Parkhouse)