YOUR VIEWS: Highland Council must provide more bins and a 24/7 skip at Kinlochbervie
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Letter to the Editor from Margaret Meek, secretary of Kinlochbervie Community Company
I READ Malcolm Bangor-Jones’ letter in the Northern Times (October 13) with great interest.
If we are to embrace tourism, the Highland Council and the Scottish Government must take into account what is needed to encourage responsible tourism that both benefits the Highlands and minimises negative impacts on residents.
I was particularly interested in the example of the extra sanitation workers that were hired in 2021 and 2022 to swap litter bins daily in tourist areas. This programme was extremely successful and not costly. I was dismayed to discover that it wasn’t in the budget for 2023.
The subsequent motion to bring it back for the remainder of the 2023 season was voted down (£110,000 for 17 weeks). I was astonished. It seemed a small amount for a programme that was very effective and I don’t understand why it was voted down.
At the council meeting, councillors talked about lack of funds and said that people should be told to take their litter home. I felt that these were hollow reasons and not very convincing.
Let me tell you about our experience this summer with the bins at Loch Clash Stopover in Kinlochbervie.
This is a small community owned site that provides overnight parking for motorhomes and offers electric hookup, waste disposal and fresh water.
I am a member of the community group (Kinlochbervie Community Company) that owns this facility.
The money raised is used for providing small grants for community initiatives such as equipment for the village hall, money to maintain defibrillators, supplies for a school-age group, grants for the delivery of various courses and funds towards improving the community-owned nursery building.
We have two bins on our site and pay the council for commercial uplift (£1,700 per annum). This year we have been plagued with overflowing bins. The bins are adequate for the rubbish produced by our guests. Unfortunately we find that motorhome tourists on ‘wild camping’ holidays often dispose of their rubbish in our bins.
There are few alternatives; the council has removed some public bins and replaced others with the type that have small round holes on top. In addition, the village’s large 24/7 waste skip was replaced in 2020 by one that is only available for four hours per week.
If this skip were to be brought back, we could at least put posters on our bins asking people not staying on our site to take their rubbish to the waste skip.
I have taken photographs of our bins during every rubbish cycle. The sanitation workers are well aware of the situation and I am sure will verify this. We have also received complaints from our guests.
As a community group, we are proud of our site but feel helpless to resolve this. The current situation is embarrassing.
We ask that the council provide adequate public bins to accommodate tourists who aren’t staying overnight on campgrounds and to return the 24/7 waste skip to Kinlochbervie Harbour so that both tourists and locals can have convenient access (not four hours per week).
Our community group should not have to bear this burden. As we enter the budget process for 2024/2025, I hope these problems will be addressed.
