Fears of fly tipping as open days are set to be cut at Longridge Household Waste Recycling Centre

Barbara Afflick, from Inglewhite, is angry that Longridge Household Waste Recycling Centre will only be open between 9am and 5pm, five days a week when changes are introduced on October 1.

But according to Lancashire County Council (LCC) the recycling centre will remain open at the weekends.

Barbara, 78, who goes to the recycling centre at least four times a week, said: “They used to be open until 8pm then they said it was 7pm and now it’s 5pm. What are people going to do who don’t finish work at 5pm?

“I have a massive garden and all the stuff I take is garden waste or grass.

“Supposing you want to take something there before you go to work?”

LCC announced the closure days and reduced opening hours in May after a public consultation on the issue.

It means six of Lancashire’s household waste recycling centres will shut for two days a week from the autumn.

And opening hours at all 15 centres across the county will also be reduced by three hours per day.

The Longridge tip in Chapel Hill is currently open seven days a week between 8am and 7pm.

The reduced hours are set to save Lancashire County Council £704,000 a year from the authority’s budget.

A public consultation into the plans attracted more than 1,200 responses, with roughly half of people opposed to both the cut in hours and days. Eighty-three percent of respondents said that having access to the facilities at weekends was important to them.

Barbara says that with more and more house building in the area she is worried about the services in the area.

“Everything around here now is being diminished and diminished,” she said. “Everything is going downhill. There are no footpaths, street lighting the roads are atrocious.

“And there are so many houses being built around here.

“People will fly tip - there’s no doubt about it but it’s wrong.

“We all need to get a handle on what needs to be done withe all our waste.”

A report presented to LCC says there is “no evidence” of increased fly tipping when recycling centres are closed.

It states: “The recycling centres are currently open 11 hours a day, seven days a week over summer and fly tipping still occurs across the county. This is because most fly tipping is carried out by unscrupulous businesses who do not want to pay for their waste to be disposed of properly.

“As such the main fly tipping culprits will not be affected by Household Waste Recycling Centre changes. The majority of residents care for their local environment and would not fly tip as a result of a change in operational hours.

“It is expected that in the immediate period following changes some waste may be left at the facility gates, mainly by customers who hadn’t realised the facility was not open.”

Officers at LCC are considering which days the recycling centre at Longridge will close - either Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday or Thursday.

All recycling centres in Lancashire affected by the changes will open on Bank Holidays even if a site’s normal closure day is Monday.