SERVICE FAR FROM RUBBISH!

Like many Brigg families we've generated far too much rubbish over the festive period to await the various council bin collections, prompting a trip to the Brigg area skip site between Wressle and Broughton this morning.
Before setting off I checked the North Lincolnshire Council website to ensure the facility would be open. However, I had my doubts. So it was a very pleasant surprise to not only find the site open for business as normal, despite this being the Saturday following New Year, but that the helpful attendant had taken the trouble to sand the hard-standing areas so no-one came to grief going up, or coming down, the inclines leading to the skips - or while climbing the metal steps to toss in their bags of festive rubbish.
There have been many stories in the national press in recent weeks about a host of councils up and down the country which refuse (no pun intended!) to re-organise their bin rounds, leaving householders on a fortnightly cycle like ours to go up to a month without collections.
For a time after North Lincolnshire Council took over from Glanford Borough it failed to acknowledge the unfairness of Brigg missing out every bank holiday Monday, when no collections were carried out (Monday then being our collection day). However, they noted householders' complaints, had a re-think and re-organised collections. So the current bank holiday and festive collection arrangements are about as good as we are going to get in Brigg, when compared with other councils up and down the UK.
It's still a nuisance to have to load the car and drive over to Broughton with the excess (consider the carbon footprint), and the various bins provided are nothing like big enough to take an average family's festive left-overs. You could also argue that the council ought to collect more often over Christmas and New Year - the time of year when the most rubbish is generated. But we have to be realistic.
Some council services are inspected - presumably by the Government, with input from the general public - and awarded star ratings. Maybe Christmas and New Year collections should be added to this markings list and the findings published nationally.
My guess is North Lincolnshire Council would, as the football folk like to say, 'get a result' on that one.