News from the New Party

Thursday, May 31, 2007

Bin and gone

Three cheers for Chris and Kate Whyatt, of Brompton-on-Swale, near Richmond in Yorkshire, who have leapt into the breach left by Richmondshire Council's abandonment of weekly refuse collection services by starting their own rubbish collection service to cover the council's off-weeks. "Bin-and-Gone" charges £90 a year to its customers, of whom it already has 75.

This raises the interesting possibility that local authority hostages (i.e. council tax payers) might be able to engage private companies to collect and dispose of their refuse on a much wider scale. At £90 a year for fortnightly collections, a weekly collection would probably be not much more expensive (if at all) than the council-run operation, for a service which would probably be better. If the BBC report is to be believed, the head of waste (strangely apt title) at Richmondshire District Council, a Mr Sean Little, has entirely failed to get the point:

"People living in the district pay council tax to have their waste and recycling dealt with; there really is no need to be paying any extra.

"Our alternate weekly collections are hugely successful and generally well received, with residents embracing the change."

The measure of the success of a service should not be the degree of satisfaction to the provider, but the satisfaction of the client. Given the recent brouhaha about local authority refuse collection services, and the quality and frequency thereof, the opportunity for dissatisfied customers to opt out would seem reasonable enough. The problem, as always, is that those who choose to pay for a private service voluntarily also pay for the public service compulsorily.

It is a conceit of all governments, national and local, that the voting (and suffering) public is only too happy to be dragooned into participating in any old scheme for the benefit of the politicians and administrators themselves. That so many people persist in believing that "public services" are better than privately provided services is a testament to the effectiveness of decades of socialist black propaganda.

All other things being equal, a private service provider will always be more efficient and effective than a public service provider. Competition forces an organisation to be leaner, fitter, and better able to deliver the service the customer demands. The vested interests that so often infest public service providers only serves to compound the inherent inefficiencies of a state or council run solution.

So no cheers at all for Richmondshire District Council, or any other council that treats its customers as a nuisance to be tolerated, or as a source of income, rather than as the fount of accountability for the quality of public services for all.

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Bin and gone