THE latest expensive questionnaire distributed by City of York Council is another fruitless exercise. When has it listened and implemented the views of the residents?

I fully support recycling, but in my opinion you can provide as many bins and boxes as you wish but I doubt if you will educate everyone to use them correctly. If not, sorting will be required when collecting or it will end up in landfill, thus defeating the object.

In our area the recycling team appears to consist of a driver and two men who work extremely hard cleaning and sorting our rubbish. Extra bins, in my opinion, would create extra work. If you are too dictatorial on how we should handle our waste or impose financial penalties, it will encourage fly-tipping, which in itself creates extra expense.

As for cutting jobs to make more money available for frontline services, if the jobs were not necessary how were they created in the first place?

Finally, the only good news is the proposed increase in cremation charges, so we will not be able to afford to die.

Ken Thorpe, Ebor Way, Upper Poppleton, York.


• The latest “consultation” questionnaire is currently arriving on residents’ doorsteps. These missives are very familiar, since they are regularly sent not only by the city council but by the local bodies which look the local amenities with the cash from the council’s coffers.

It is almost certain that most, if not all, the questions will have already been asked and answered several times over, even if they have been couched in slightly different wording. The priorities for savings must be well known.

Some questions will probably get an obvious answer. For example, question three, first section: “Would you support separating waste into 1 paper and card, 2 glass bottles and jars, 3 plastic bottles and cans, to save the crew time in sorting.”

This household already has one grey bin, one green bin, one blue box, one dark blue bag (plastics), one light blue bag (paper), one dark green bag(cardboard, not forgetting one compost bin.

It requires little imagination to realise the storage space required, empty or full, with up to five along the house front at one time, for collection. Most replies to that question would probably be a tick in the “no” box.

J Beisly, Osprey Close, York.


• The council’s 2010 budget consultation was printed by a firm in Leeds. What a disgrace, could no one in York print this?

The council may say it was cheaper to print in Leeds, but it had to be transported to York, probably by some polluting white van. So there is no support for local jobs and we also get the so-called pollution the council keep going on about, plus it adds to congestion on the A64.

Also why were only 21,216 copies were printed for a city with a population of 180,000?

If you knock 80,000 off for children there are still 100,000 people so about 78,000 people have no say in this questionnaire.

Finally, what on earth relevance has your religion, ethnic group or sexual orientation have to do with this questionnaire?

Paul Simpson, Thornhills, Haxby, York.

Heather Rice, director of people and improvement at City of York Council, said: “The council asks a number of local and regional printers for print quotes. The winning quote gives the best value for money for York taxpayers – we are legally not allowed to use companies only from York.

“A total of 90,000 leaflets were printed, providing one for each household in the city. The consultation is also available online at york.gov.uk if household members wish to complete individual questionnaires. The purpose of the consultation is to allow the council to understand residents’ priorities better, before councillors make decisions about next year’s budget. The survey is not intended to be a ‘vote’ – decisions will still be made by councillors.

“The profiling questions (Q1 to Q7) are asked as standard in many public sector surveys. All the questions, apart from question 1 which asks about the first section of your postcode, have a ‘prefer not to say’ box which you can tick if you don’t want to give us this information.

“We need to ask these questions to meet Government and legal requirements and for us to know that we are getting all our customers’ views about council services. This will help us know whether one group of people, for example older people or disabled people, have particular concerns. If we find this is the case further work is done to identify and address any issues.”