Anyone who lives in Cornwall and is planning to hire a van to take household waste to the tip needs to plan ahead. Cornwall Council is now operating a permit scheme to restrict access to household waste recycling centres by vans or vehicles with trailers of more than 1.8m internal length.
This means you cannot simply hire a van for the weekend and then take it to the tip – you will need to plan ahead and contact Cornwall Council to be issued with a permit, which allows 12 visits per year.
Cornwall Council has introduced the permit scheme to crack down on abuse of household tips by trade users, who pretend that their waste is domestic in order to avoid paying commercial rates for its disposal.
The scheme has already produced impressive results – Cornwall Council says that there has been a 15% fall in waste going through household waste sites since the permit requirement was introduced. This equates to a £600,000 saving – costs that were presumably previously being met by council tax payers.
Cornwall Council has issued 14,500 permits so far, including 9,200 for vans.
Cornwall Council has Household Waste Recycling Centres in the following loctions (click on the links for nearby van rental branches or click here to search for van hire in your area):
- Bodmin
- Bude
- Liskeard (Connon Bridge)
- Falmouth
- Helston
- Launceston
- Newquay
- Redruth
- Saltash
- St Austell
- St Day (Redruth)
- St Erth (Hayle)
- Tintagel (Bowithick)