Walsall tips to open seven days a week from April
Walsall's two tips will be open seven days a week from April, it has been announced.
Opening hours will be extended in the town as part of a three-month trial which is hoped will help tackle fly-tipping in the borough.
The tips at Fryers Road, Bloxwich, and Merchants Way, Aldridge, will be open from 8am to 6pm six days a week.
They will be open later one day a week, from 10am to 8pm on Tuesdays at Merchants Way and Thursdays at Fryers Road.
The extended hours will run until the end of June, when summer opening hours will come in. Council bosses said future tip opening hours would depend on whether the trial was a success.
The Bloxwich site is currently closed on Thursdays and Fridays while the Aldridge site is shut on Tuesdays and Wednesdays.
Council leader Mike Bird pledged to open tips for longer when he returned to the role last year. He said it was important residents could access tips at all times and believes having the service available every day will deter fly-tippers who have cost the council £1 million a year.
Councillor Louise Harrison, environment boss at Walsall Council, said: "As with the other trials, this is all about listening to what residents have said and giving them every opportunity to do the right thing by ensuring their household waste is disposed of legally and safely. When this trial finishes, we will be analysing whether or not the trials have made a significant impact and that will inform our future decision-making.
“When it comes to fly-tipping, most of us are disgusted when we see photographs of fly-tipping in our neighbourhoods on social media, but we can all play a part in preventing it.”
Changes to fortnightly brown bin collections for garden waste will also be brought in after the Conservative-led council scrapped three-week collections run by the previous administration.
Councillor Harrison said: “People told us how important a fortnightly collection of their garden waste was to them. A collection every three weeks just wasn’t working for them so we decided the right thing to do was to go back to collections every two weeks.”
