Details on closure of tip site ‘wrong’ (From York Press)

Details on closure of Beckfield Lane tip ‘wrong’

8:16am Wednesday 16th May 2012 in News

A LEADING York councillor has been accused of getting his facts wrong over the controversial closure of a York waste recycling centre.

The Beckfield Lane tip was closed by Labour-controlled City of York Council last month amid budget cuts, despite more than 2,800 people signing a petition calling for it to be saved, and the site could now be sold for housing.

The authority’s Liberal Democrat group has now criticised Coun Dafydd Williams, cabinet member for communities and neighbourhoods at the time, after he admitted some of the information used to justify the closure was “not correct”. He told a special meeting of the council, set up to debate the Beckfield Lane issue, that recycling skips at the Towthorpe waste centre were “fully accessible”, but has now said there are “a few steps to those facilities”.

Dringhouses and Woodthorpe councillor Ann Reid, who learned of the error in an email from Coun Williams, said this would cause problems for disabled users at Towthorpe.

Coun Reid said: “It is shocking that he presented inaccurate information to the council, and on such an important issue you would have thought he would at least have bothered to visit all York’s recycling centres.”

Coun Williams said all the other information on access matters which he gave to the meeting, based on officials’ advice, was correct.