SPEN Valley residents have been assured that Kirklees Council is not checking grey bins following criticism of its policy of using advisers to check green bins.

The council responded after several residents in Littletown complained that red warning stickers had been placed on their grey waste bins during collections in May.

The stickers advised that bins had not been emptied because they contained garden waste and that they would only be emptied on the next collection if the garden waste was removed.

The stickers also advised residents to contact the council for a free garden waste collection.

However Kirklees Council does not offer a free garden waste collection service.

Instead it is currently encouraging residents across the borough to sign up to its paid-for garden waste collection by paying for a brown bin costing £37.50 per year.

A council spokesman said: “This is an old sticker, which has not been used in years. We’re not checking grey bins and garden waste is not a free collection.”

Councillor Lisa Holmes (Con, Liversedge and Gomersal) raised the issue with the council following complaints by local residents.

She received the following response: “Staff were not instructed by management to use these stickers.

“Stickers were being used by staff with good intention, but using the wrong process.

“Staff have been informed of the correct process to advise residents of any collection issues (through recycling advisers, for a more informative, thorough discussion).”

Kirklees has come under fire for spending £80,000 on 12 temporary advisers who accompany bin crews on their rounds and check the contents of green recycling bins for contaminated waste.

Bins containing illegal waste receive a yellow sticker. If the resident continues to use the bin wrongly it is confiscated. Residents can apply to have their green bin returned after six months.

Impounding bins forms part of a new council crackdown on incorrect waste, which aims to prevent the contents of entire bin wagons being contaminated thus making contents unrecyclable.

Since April 1 the council has seized more than 1,300 green bins, some of which are being stored at its Emerald Street depot in Huddersfield.

Last week advisers began patrolling in North Kirklees. The scheme will run until late July when bin crews are set to take over monitoring what residents are throwing away.

Ward councillors have also been invited to patrol with advisers as part of an educational exercise. However the council has confirmed they will not be expected to look through bin contents.

Advisers have received abuse from residents over the monitoring project, with one female member of staff having a warning sticker stuck to her forehead by an angry member of the public in Slaithwaite.

And in Rawthorpe residents blockaded a bin wagon until refuse workers agreed to empty green bins that had previously been left behind as they contained the wrong type of rubbish.

Cllr Holmes criticised the council’s approach, commenting: “They are pushing it onto residents.”

She added: “They have invited councillors to go out [with advisers], but what are they going to do? Stand there and watch them go through the bins?

“I wouldn’t blame the binmen for being unhappy about this. They get enough abuse as it is.

“How it’s been done is just dreadful.”