Cheshire East Council is having to change its booking system for tips because the closure of three sites has sparked long queues at others causing “significant” traffic hazards, writes Belinda Ryan.
The existing household waste recycling centre booking system operates at weekends only and was introduced in August 2024.
It was part of mitigations associated with “emergency” closures of the tips at Poynton, Bollington and Middlewich.
The council says the purpose of the weekend booking system was to manage the use of the four remaining HWRCs at Crewe, Macclesfield, Knutsford and Alsager during busy times, which was historically weekends.
But residents are now using the tips more at the beginning of the week to avoid the booking system.
This has led to long queues, particularly at Crewe and Macclesfield, causing traffic dangers – something residents warned the council about as long ago as September 2024.
Cheshire East has now acknowledged this.
A report to next week’s meeting of the environment and communities committee states: “The queues at the HWRCs during the early part of the week often transcend the site boundaries meaning that residents are queuing on the public highway.
“This causes a significant road traffic hazard, especially at the Macclesfield site where the entrance to the site is situated on the main public highway located on the brow of a hill, and at the Crewe site where the access road also serves a major industrial employment site.”
On Thursday the committee will be asked to give the go-ahead for alterations to be made to the booking system “to account for health and safety and traffic congestion issues at HWRCs”.
The council was warned of the dangers 16 months ago.
As reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service at the time, on the day the environment and communities committee controversially voted to close the tips at Poynton, Bollington and Middlewich permanently, residents were already warning that Macclesfield tip was struggling to cope following the emergency closure of the three sites.
Poynton town councillor Laurence Clarke told the meeting the closures had led to ‘more traffic on the roads, with big queues outside Macclesfield tip on Congleton Road’.
And there were numerous reports on social media at the time of queues stretching as far back as the Flower Pot junction in Macclesfield.
The environment and communities committee meeting takes place at 10.30am on Thursday, January 29, at Macclesfield Town Hall.
Obviously a bad decision to close local tips with no thought for elderly people having to drive miles to dispose of household and garden rubbish increasing traffic needlessly
Surprise surprise!!
Numpty’s
“Cheshire East Council is having to change its booking system for tips because the closure of three sites has sparked long queues at others ” – Wow!! Whoever could have anticipated that?
Close all the tips. No traffic problem. Simple.
Well if people are avoiding the booking system. Go back to no booking. I’ve been in the Crewe traffic, not wanting to go the tip. It’s madness. Because Bentley were allowed to close the only other way in , there lies your problem.
Hmm, not very forward thinking here. With the recent discovery of illegal dump sites across the UK and even more fly tipping, this will just lead people to even more fly tipping.
This is what happends when you cut the only services people can use to remove there rubbish. A population of nearly 400k and only 3 mabe 4 main tips when there was at one point 9 tips in the area all had high use. Cheshire east then shortened the opening times from 8am to 9pm April to September. And 8am to 5 October to March. And guess what less flying tipping happened and no ques. Cheshire east have in trying to save money has no made a system that is not fit for purpose a tip that opens 9am to 4pm is no good its a public service and should be accessible. Out sourcing the waste sites and closing some down to save a few quid now is not a smart move as it will cost Cheshire east more to clean up fly tipping and at some point something will have to be done and Cheshire east will have to look at reopening the closed sites or extend current sites or build new sites all of which are more costly then what the council has tried to save. This idea was not a good one in the long run it will bite the council on the arse. And we are starting to see this play out. Well done Cheshire east yet a other smart move by you.