Dear Mr M., Enforcement Officer (Cleansing), Your Ref: McB/CP/3108/3

Thank-you for your letter of 28/9/03 demanding a Duty of Care form within 14 days from every single property in Scarborough Borough registered for Business Rates. I really do sincerely hope that Scarborough Borough Council (SBC) is aware that Groves Dyke Holiday Cottage is, in fact, a holiday cottage.

As a holiday cottage it produces the kinds and volumes of ‘trade waste’ which any reasonable person might expect from a single holiday cottage which ‘sleeps 5 + cot, no pets,’ but I really do my best to minimise the impact of this on the local countryside.

You will be delighted to learn that Groves Dyke Holiday Cottage has been developed over the past eleven years as an environmentally friendly location, incorporating many of the green principles of two professional conservationists.

These include:

1. Six inches of loft insulation (when SBC would only provide grants for four inches)
2. Cavity wall insulation (no SBC assistance)
3. Solar panels (no SBC assistance)
4. Double glazing throughout (no SBC assistance)
5. A 5-acre private woodland nature reserve planted in 1982-5 (no SBC assistance)

   Holiday-makers staying at Groves Dyke Holiday Cottage tend to be environmentally aware and so, in addition to the old fashioned dust bins, they are also provided with:

    

6. A container for recycling paper (no SBC ‘kerb-side’ recycling collection service)
7. A container for recycling glass (no SBC ‘kerb-side’ recycling collection service)
8. A container for recycling plastics (no SBC ‘kerb-side’ recycling collection service)
9. A container for recycling aluminium (no SBC ‘kerb-side’ recycling collection service)
10. A container for on-site composting (no SBC ‘kerb-side’ recycling collection service).

I myself personally have to transport all the paper and glass for recycling from Groves Dyke Holiday Cottage, in my own car, to the nearest SBC Recycling Collection points at Sleights (which are often overflowing) or to the one at Whitby Co-op car park.

So far I have been quite unable to locate any SBC recycling points for cardboard, plastics or aluminium. Where are these, please? Non-existent? OK then, when will they be provided? Excellent! And when will there be kerbside collections for all recycling?

Scarborough Borough is quite a popular holiday area and thus includes a large number of holiday cottages registered as ‘business premises.’ Would it not have been quite a good idea to delete all of these from your mail shot? This would reduce our rates and avoid hundreds of copies of your letter / replies adding to the ‘trade waste’ on my desk, in your filing system, on our countryside and SBC’s Mickleby Tip? (Sorry, ‘landfill site’).

As well as this expensive and inefficient mailshot, does SBC have a Fly-tipping Hotline and 'Hit Squads' to remove rubbish quickly, search for evidence and prosecute the offenders?

Yours sincerely, Niall Carson (Proprietor, Groves Dyke Holiday Cottage). 4th June ‘03.

No, its not just Scarborough Borough Council that is writing to every single Business Rates payer asking for a Duty of Care form - it is every single Local Authority in the UK - including yours!

Last year the responsibility for checking on proper 'Trade Waste' disposal passed from the Environment Agency (EA) to each of the Local Authorities in England and Wales, but since the EA never bothered to find out which business actually produced any trade waste, each Local Authority now has to contact every single business in its area to ask for a Duty of Care form.

NB: When a business pays a waste disposal contractor to dispose of trade waste, the contractor must give the business a Duty of Care form detailing how the waste will be disposed of. But if you have never ever paid a waste disposal contractor to dispose of your trade waste, then you will never have been given, or will never even have heard of, a Duty of Care form. Good, innit?

SBC now has (at Whitby Co-op car park) a recycling bin for all (rinsed) food and drink tin cans, not just aluminium drink cans. I will be happy to take the ones from Groves Bank and Groves Dyke to this recycling point as well.

SBC is currently trialling domestic kerbside recycling collections in Filey. When these have been perfected they will be extended to Scarborough, then (in 5 years) to Whitby. When all SBC domestic properties are covered, then they will consider extending it to business premises. About 2010 maybe...?