Bill for bin men holiday cover £400k

PRIVATE contractors brought in to help cover for bin men taking public holidays cost the city £400,000 in the last nine months, it emerged today.

A new city council report has confirmed that total expenditure on contractors during the bin dispute in the nine months up to the end of November 2010 was 321,000.

Over the Christmas and New Year period, a further 78,000 was paid out covering public holiday collections that had previously been covered by staff working overtime. But officials do not expect any further costs of this kind to emerge in the final months of 2010-11 because there are no more public holidays that need to be covered.

When costs relating to the bin dispute and the response to the winter weather are excluded, the services for communities department of the council is expected to come in 1 million under budget.