A bid by the Conservatives to re-introduce bin collections over Christmas has been scuppered by the unions.

Kirklees is the only local authority in West Yorkshire to give bin crews the full week off between Christmas and New Year.

Bin collections stop on Christmas Eve and don’t resume until after New Year’s Day, meaning that households miss at least one collection depending on how Christmas falls.

The Conservatives say that is a huge inconvenience for families at a time when rubbish piles up putting more pressure on council tips.

Tory leader Clr David Hall has long wanted to see Christmas bin collections re-start in Kirklees and got the agreement of the ruling Labour Cabinet earlier this year.

The minority Labour group didn’t have enough councillors to vote through its budget this year and had to accept an amendment from the Tories which included putting money aside for Christmas bin collections.

However, during a debate about next year’s budget at Wednesday’s full council meeting, it emerged that Christmas bin collections are a non-starter as the unions won’t agree to it.

Council leader Clr Carole Pattison said a “discussion had been held” about Christmas bin collections but the Conservative group had now agreed that introducing the new festive period collections wasn’t “going to be feasible.”

Instead the money was being put into community clean-ups across Kirklees, which had already started.

Clr Hall was keen to make it clear what had happened and said they had only reluctantly accepted it because “the trade unions won’t make it happen.”

During the debate, Clr Graham Turner, the council’s Cabinet member for finance and regeneration, revealed the council was facing an £18 million budget deficit which, while significant, was less severe than recent years.

The council is still waiting to hear how much it’ll receive from the Government and that’s likely to come in Chancellor Rachel Reeves’ Budget which doesn’t happen until November 26, much later than usual.

Clr Turner called the date of the Budget a “poor decision” which would put pressure on many local authorities which had to draw up a balanced budget by February.

He hoped the Government would give local authorities some indication about the level of financial support ahead of the Budget to ease the pressure.

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