'Lessons to be learned' after grit bins outcry

Councillors will learn lessons, after voting for a budget that left people without vital grit bins, a Liberal Democrat says of his group.

A winter maintenance review was part of Dudley Council's 2025-26 budget, approved by the ruling minority Conservative group, with Lib Dem support. But public outrage erupted during recent cold weather over the removal of about 500 bins.

Lib Dem councillor Andrew Tromans said that, in the budget, "it didn't say we are going to remove 500 grit bins; it said we would review them".

A new review has been announced with council leader Patrick Harley saying bins that "maybe shouldn't have gone" would go back.

Speaking before an extraordinary meeting of the full council, Lib Dem leader Ryan Priest said the budget was passed "believing what we were doing was making the service more efficient".

But "what came out of that is a service that for most people in the borough did not exist", he added.

"The changes have been over-zealous and it is right the administration rolls back and reviews the situation."

Tromans added: "In the budget it didn't say we are going to remove 500 grit bins; it said we would review them and wouldn't take them away if they were more than 25m from a main gritting route, that didn't happen.

"There are lessons to be learned for our group; we will take that on board."

The Lib Dems claim the new review would not have happened without a petition they launched gathering about 1,000 names.

Thursday's extraordinary meeting was sparked by a Labour motion calling for the bins to be replaced.

Conservative Harley said sometimes the "smallest savings cause you the biggest headaches".

"This was a £60,000 saving, it caused us huge headaches so first of all you have to put your hands up and apologise about that," he said.

Harley added bins "that have been removed won't go back if the grit has not been used for three or four years".

But he stated there may be additional bins "in locations that we didn't have before".

At the meeting, Labour's Dudley leader, Adam Aston, said the "politics of removing grit bins" took away the community's ability to "keep roads clear that the council doesn't have the capacity to treat".

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.

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