The call comes after Pendle MP Gordon Prentice secured the intervention of the Prime Minister in addressing problems with East Lancashire’s inadequate Emergency Department at the Royal Blackburn Hospital.

At a full meeting of the Council, councillors of all four political parties voted unanimously to support a motion put forward by health scrutiny member Coun Darren Reynolds asking both the Trust and the Secretary of State to have outside experts give a second opinion on whether Burnley should have its own Accident and Emergency department.

Councillors wanted to know why smaller pairs of towns elsewhere in Lancashire and Yorkshire had independent units that are able to keep to their budgets, meet government targets and win national recognition for providing the best treatment for patients. Councillors poured scorn on suggestions that Blackburn was big enough to provide a service for the whole of East Lancashire, saying that the evidence time and again proved otherwise.

Coun Darren Reynolds said, “The hospitals bosses have said publicly that they respect the democratic process. I believe it is now for them to prove that by accepting the unanimous request of Burnley Council and setting up the review we have been demanding since the chaos in Blackburn began, two years ago.

Coun Linda White, who represents residents in Brunshaw, said that many of the people who live in her area simply cannot afford to pay such high fees. At the moment, all the Borough’s residents must pay £17.95 for up to four bulky items, such as a wardrobe or a mattress, to be removed. For fridges and freezers, this charge is paid per item.

Coun White said, “If you have to pay £17.95 just to get your bedside cabinet removed because it won’t fit in your wheelie bin, that’s nearly the price of a small skip!

“When there’s so much uncertainty around about jobs and money, every charge the Council makes has to be looked at for savings. Surely this charge doesn’t reflect the true cost of collecting a sofa?”

Other councillors have said the Council should use Freecycle to improve re-use rates. Freecycle is a service that allows people with unwanted but usable goods to find someone who can make use of them. Coun Karen Heseltine, who represents Rosehill and Burnley Wood, said that the cost of sending goods to landfill was up to £50 per ton. Coun Heseltine said she would like to see some of the goods collected by the Council passed on to someone in need instead.

The matter is set to come before the Council’s decision-making body in the coming weeks. Coun Charlie Briggs, the executive member responsible, said, “I agree with Linda and Karen. These charges are too high and we have to look at a way of bringing the costs down.

“It’s made a bit easier because recycling rates in the borough have almost tripled since the Lib Dems took over running the Council. We’re keeping a lid on waste disposal costs because instead of paying to put rubbish into landfill, the Council earns money by selling clean rubbish to scrap dealers.

“On the other hand, our contractor charges us the equivalent of about £30 for each bulky collection, which is nearly double what we currently charge to residents.

“The exact price the Council can cut the charge down to for a bulky collection is still being worked out, but I’m determined we must pass all savings on to taxpayers. We should cut the charges as low as we can get them without it impacting the Council Tax, even though budgets are already very stretched.

“If we can get the charge down to £10 and do that without putting Council Tax up then I think everyone will be delighted. I’m going to ask officers if they can find a way to do that on a three month trial basis and see where we go from there.”

The final decision rests with the Council Executive.

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We have been asked by the Labour Party to clarify the statement in the first paragraph of the above story.

Labour-run Burnley Council decided in January 2006 to introduce charges for the collection of bulky waste.  At that time they voted to introduce a charge of £10 per collection (£11.75 including VAT) with plans for it to rise to £15 (£17.62 including VAT) for the 2007/8 financial year.

This policy was followed when the 2007/8 budget was set (Labour at this point had been voted out of running Burnley Council by local people)

There was an inflationary increase of 1.8% under the Lib Dems to £17.95 for the financial year 2008/9.  As the article above makes clear the Lib Dem-run Council has since reduced this charge to the current £11.75 (inc VAT) which is well below the level intended by the previous Labour administration.

The opening paragraph has been redrafted to make this clearer.  For transparency it is recorded that it originally read “Liberal Democrats on Burnley Council are demanding an end to the £17.95 charges introduced by the previous Labour executive for collecting bulky items.”

We are happy to provide this clarification.