I WOULD like to comment on the issue of Wiltshire Council’s ongoing public consultation on Waste and Recycling Strategy, previously referred to by Charmian Spickernell (Letters, October 5) as I believe it is one that merits further attention.
It seems obvious that waste management, now involving the council’s strategy for the next ten years for kerbside collection (and disposal of other domestic waste at household recycling centres), is one of the few council services that impacts directly and importantly, on a regular basis, on virtually all of the 215,000 domestic households in the county. It affects health, safety and the environment. 
The council has said that it wants as many of the county’s residents as possible to respond to their consultation. Yet, the indications to date are that too few people know of its existence, due to the failure by the council to promulgate it appropriately.
At a Pewsey Area Board meeting held on September 11, it was clear from comments made by the council’s associate director for waste management that apart from the consultation being available on the council’s website (there seemingly having been no publicity that it was actually online at all), the council was looking to a ‘trickle down’ effect via Area Boards, parish councils, and individual members of the public, to achieve the publicity it wanted. 
This somewhat limited reply prompted the chairman of Pewsey Parish Council to inquire why, given the importance of the matter under discussion, a mailshot was not being sent to all households in the county. 
The council’s response was that the postage costs would be in the region of £70/80,000 – the obvious implication being that it would be too expensive. What was not mentioned, is that an expenditure in the order of, say, £150,000 in all, to include printing costs, would represent no more than 0.5 per cent of a waste management budget currently running at some £30,000,000 per annum. 
If the council is genuine in its wish to engage with its residents on this subject, and wishes to accommodate their views as far as possible, is this an expenditure the council cannot afford not to make on a ten-year plan? 
To date, any request to inform individual households appropriately, appears to have fallen on deaf ears, which leads to a general question of whether the council gives sufficient publicity to its public consultations anyway. Mailshots or fliers to every household are clearly not appropriate other than on vital matters that affect the entire county. Area Boards and parish councils certainly have their part to play, but resources are generally very limited. 
Individual residents with the resources to help should do so, but the council ought not to rely on them, as the responsibility for publicity is the council’s, not theirs. In short, I suggest the council needs to become more proactive on how it publicises its consultations. Merely relying largely on putting the details on its website, without proper publicity, is not good enough, being neither fair, democratic or transparent. The consultation portal is buried fairly deeply within the council’s system and the public are certainly not going to go hunting for it regularly, without reason.
Let us begin a reasonable and constructive debate between the council and the public, as to how matters can be improved. 
The chairman of Manningford Parish Council has suggested to me that a list of ongoing public consultations should appear automatically and prominently on the home page of the council’s website, every time anybody uses it – an excellent idea, which I propose to take up with Councillor Bridget Wayman, Cabinet member for Waste. 
I have suggested to her already that the council publishes a similar list within the first two or three pages of two of our most prominent local newspapers, where it is most likely to be seen and read, on a monthly, or even more frequent basis. I am sure Councillor Wayman will be willing to entertain any other ideas that residents may wish to offer. 
In this way, we ought to be able to achieve better communication between the council and the public, whether a public consultation is on a purely local issue, or countywide.
Meanwhile, for those of your readers who may be unaware of its existence, but who now wish to view, and hopefully, complete the council’s ongoing public consultation on Waste and Recycling Strategy, may I direct them to the council’s website at http:/ /consult.wiltshire.gov.uk/portal from where access to the consultation is obtainable.
WILLIAM BARRY
Manningford Abbots
Pewsey