A COMPLETE shake-up of how a council does business could pay for the return of weekly bin collections, an opposition leader has said.

Cllr John Slater has pledged that if the Conservative Party win back control of Blackburn with Darwen Council he would radically restructure and slim-down the authority to find the hundreds of thousands of pounds needed.

He would scrap the executive board and its annual £60,000 a year allowances for senior councillors, abolish the £128,000 post of deputy chief executive and return the council to a committee system

Cllr Slater said this, with additional pension and administrative costs, would save more than £210,000 annually towards the cost of reversing Labour bosses unexpected decision to scrap weekly bin collections last year.

He said: “It would cost an initial £625,000 to return to weekly collections, scrap the requirement for 500 rural householders to drag their bins to the end of their lane to be picked up and ditch the ‘garden tax’ where residents have to pay for green waste to be collected.

“Labour did all this without mentioning it in their 2016 election manifesto, breaking previous promises.

“The changes are extremely unpopular with residents.

“They were made sneakily when there were no borough council elections.

“If the Conservatives take back power in the May 2018 local elections we will bring back weekly collections as we did last time and borrow £941,000 over 10 to 15 years and make long-term annual savings on the cost running the council to finance it and other services.”

Labour deputy leader and finance boss Cllr Andy Kay disputed Cllr Slater’s figures.

He said: “These figures just do not add up.

“Replacing the current executive board system with old-style committees would not make the savings he claims.

“Local government finance rules would not allow him to borrow £941,000 over 10 to 15 years to pay for revenue expenditure.

“He would have to borrow the money annually at a much higher interest rate which would be insane at a time when we are so strapped for cash.

“Getting rid of Denise Park, the council’s highly-experienced and financially-qualified deputy chief executive, at this time of austerity would be a huge mistake.

“We had to make the change to weekly bin collections reluctantly because of his Tory government’s cuts to our budgets."