Hundreds of trees dumped in Barnard Castle after dispute over pay

Hundreds of real Christmas trees were dumped at a town centre car park amid confusion over a collection service.
By force of habit, many residents from across Teesdale took their trees to the car park next to Morrisons, in Barnard Castle, expecting them to be taken away to be recycled in the new year.
For almost two decades, Teesdale Conservation Volunteers, known as Rotters, has collected the used trees, which usually start appearing as early as December 27.
However, Martin Bacon, who runs Rotters, says that they couldn’t collect the trees this year as Durham County Council would not fund the service. As a result, trees piled up in the car park and by last Tuesday (January 10) were covering two of the coach parking spaces. It sparked concern about who would be clearing the trees and when it would be done.
Speaking of the sight last week, resident Kevin Jackson said: “It is a disgrace.”
Mr Bacon said: “We have done it for 17 years. Last year, we went out and did our normal collections and then in the spring we put in a claim to Durham County Council and they said they weren’t paying it.
“Usually we would advertise it but this year we haven’t. It is just force of habit people dumping their trees there.”
Each year, Rotters collects about 600 trees from the car park and then recycles them into compost.
Mr Bacon said the pile of trees in the car park was a fire risk.
He added: “It is a shame because we have been proud to do it. We’ve had a good response from the public. If Durham County Council would pay we would pick them up today. We can’t do it for free though.”
Mr Bacon left a sign saying “no trees” near to where they were left to try to deter people. He also emailed the council to notify officers of the increasing number of trees awaiting collection but said he had no response.
Durham County Council eventually cleared the trees away by the end of last week.
Durham County Council’s refuse and recycling manager Keith Parkinson said: “We provide a free Christmas tree collection service where we pick them up from people’s homes by arrangement.
“Separate to this, a third party has for a number of years collected trees from a communal point at Morrisons car park in Barnard Castle.
“We were recently informed the third party was no longer operating the collection point but that a number of trees had been left at the site since Christmas.
“We do not collect trees from communal points but on this occasion, we have removed them. However we’d strongly urge people not to leave their trees at the site in future but to instead use our collection service.”