PERMITS are being dished out to every household in North Somerset in a bid to stop ‘waste tourists’ from bringing rubbish from outside the district into council tips.
North Somerset residents are going to be issued with individual permits to allow them access recycling centres, to save the council and taxpayers from covering the cost of extra waste.
An increasing amount of people are using the facilities in Backwell and Portishead, and North Somerset has to fork out £100 per tonne of waste it sends to landfill – money which it could spend elsewhere.
The local authority has had to find £100million in savings from 2011 to 2018 due to budget cuts, and cut its budget by £17million last year alone.
Council officers are now looking into launching a new system to stop the influx, in which it would deliver 95,000 permits to all the households as early as July.
The council’s executive member for environment Peter Bryant said: “The reason we are doing this is we can estimate it is costing the authority £60,000 per year when people are slipping across borders and depositing their stuff in our skips.
“Anyone living in North Somerset who wishes to dispose of their rubbish will have to go online, put in their details, most importantly their vehicle registration, and prove they are a resident of North Somerset.
“If anyone goes on site without the permits we are using vehicle registration recognition which will be flagged up.”
Cllr Bryant suggested if the driver can provide a good reason as to why they have no permit, such as if they are new to the area, it is up to the staff member to decide if they can give the driver a one-time pass.
But if they are from a nearby authority area they will be turned away.
This change comes after the council introduced permits for vans in November 2013 to try to reduce the amount of commercial waste being dumped at these centres.
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