THE “precarious” financial position of Cornwall Council’s housing wing has led to the removal of a large number of litter and dog poo bins across the Duchy. The decision was slammed as “extremely shortsighted” at a council meeting on Tuesday, November 11.

Speaking at a meeting of the council’s sustainable growth scrutiny committee, Cllr Laurie Magown (Labour, Falmouth Arwenack) said: “At the end of October, Cornwall Housing started to remove a large number of outdoor bins in areas where there’s a large number of Cornwall Housing properties, so areas that traditionally have got larger areas of deprivation.”

Cornwall Housing Ltd manages and maintains approximately 10,200 council homes on behalf of the local authority. Cllr Magowan said 22 bins in Falmouth alone have been removed, with many more across Cornwall. “This is already having a large impact on the amount of litter and dog waste being left either in public or where the bins once were.”

The issue was raised at a full council meeting on September 16 as part of Conservative councillor James Mustoe’s Keep Cornwall Clean motion. Cllr Magowan wanted to know what steps, if any, Cornwall Council had taken to prevent or mitigate the action to remove the bins?

He added: “How will Cornwall Council respond to residents who understandably have concerns when council tax is very likely to rise next year and potentially rent is going up as well – essentially paying more for less?”

Cllr Peter La Broy, the Lib Dem / Independent administration’s portfolio holder for housing, told Cllr Magowan: “I have a feeling my answer might not give you too much comfort. The simple fact is that Cornwall Housing Ltd are in a precarious position where they need to invest every penny they possibly can in upgrading the council stock.

“We have issues in terms of coming up to speed with some of our regulatory obligations. We’re just coming to the end of a programme of updating our stock condition surveys. We are meeting our obligations on gas and electrical safety checks. We do know that we have significant issues with meeting decency standards.

“So every penny ring-fenced for Cornwall Housing has to go into looking after our own owned homes. As with many activities in the council, those which are not actual obligations are areas where perhaps small amounts of money can be saved and be put back into these issues.”

He said that Cornwall Housing consulted with every local community where “one of those dog bins slated for removal was removed. The town or parish councils had the opportunity to take those on – some did, some chose not to”.

Cllr La Broy added that he thought the best thing Cornwall Council could do was to educate people to take responsibility for their own waste and if their dog messes, they bag it up and take it home and dispose of it appropriately.

Cllr Magowan responded: “Unfortunately I think it’s an extremely shortsighted approach that has been taken by Cornwall Housing. ‘Consult’ is doing an awful lot of heavy lifting in your response in terms of town and parish councils being asked if they wanted to take them on, but with no net benefit and no income to support that. I think ‘consult’ is stretching that.

“It’s predictable in terms of the negative environmental, social and health impacts related to this, so I’m not surprised by your answer but it’s just disappointing that we, collectively with Cornwall Housing, have ended up in this position.”

Cllr Andrew Mitchell (Independent, St Ives West & Towednack) entered the debate: “To not belittle the bin issue at all, we should have alarm bells rung by what the portfolio holder said and didn’t say. This has been going on for many years – Cornwall Housing is a bit of a basket case in my opinion.

“The portfolio holder has just admitted we are failing as a landlord. We are breaking the law. We have been hauled in and given sanctions because of not meeting the legal standards.

“I think we should certainly be doing all we can to help support the portfolio holder and our housing stock. There’s 10,500-or-so tenants that we provide homes for and they need to be fit to live in.”