WHATEVER the shortcomings of our current bin collection service, and I agree there are many, my understanding is that there is a national policy for the reduction of landfill waste, tough national targets to be met and punitive costs to local authorities who fail to hit those targets.

When we look outside of Bolton, we see that other local authorities of all political persuasions — Labour, Conservative, Lib Dem —- do not typically have weekly landfill bin collections for these very reasons.

The policy of two-weekly collections of landfill waste is not unique to Labour, nor is it unique to Bolton, but now standard practice everywhere.

Some years ago, as I recall, Labour played this card to decimate the Lib Dem vote, and was successful.

It had no budget to fulfill its election promise, had to take it from elsewhere including, I believe, the road maintenance budget and the aforementioned national polices forced them to revert to two weekly collections quite quickly.

Nothing has changed, and I do not believe that the local Conservative party is able to deliver on its weekly collection promise in the medium to long term.

It may get away with it for one, at most two, years but it, just as with Labour beforehand, will be forced by external pressures and national policies to revert quite quickly to our current service levels.

We fell for this nonsense before, let's not fall for it again.

Dave Carter

Campbell Street

Farnworth