Episode 3 Postcode Lottery

Did you know that where you live dictates what you get?

Even one side of the street can be completely different to another

because every part of our lives is affected by a line on a map

and a few letters and numbers.

Well, I'm here to get you a better deal

and to reveal what is really going on in the postcode lottery.

And in this programme...

Why should it make a difference where you live in the country

as to what treatments you're allowed to have?

..we reveal the lottery of health care that has driven some of

the postcode lottery losers to the edge of despair.

I said to my family,

"I would like you, please, to book a flight and I want to go to Dignitas."

We're digging in with the guerrilla gardeners

fighting an allotment postcode lottery...

People have got tired of waiting.

We started cultivating this area just out of desperation.

..and we visit the town with no traffic wardens to ask

is this a ticket to heaven or hell?

Are you going to be a winner in the postcode lottery?

Well, I'm here to help you get you the right number.

My loyal and faithful postcode lottery team and I -

come on, guys, look busy! -

have been roaming the country to find you the most inexplicable

and ridiculous decisions taken about our lives,

based purely on where we live.

And, today, we'll be going from TA5, which is Bridgwater in Somerset,

to SY23, Aberystwyth in West Wales.

But, first, we're heading to BB4 in Rossendale, Lancashire.

The district borough of Rossendale

lies in the Irwell Valley in north-west Lancashire.

and, in its central town of Rawtenstall,

a group of locals are gathering outside the council offices,

and they seem to be pretty irate about something.

I think it's outrageous, quite frankly.

I just want to stop it because I think it's a right we all have.

It's almost a postcode lottery for where you live,

treating one group of residents differently from another group.

So, what postcode lottery has got them so angry?

Rubbish, that's what.

We think it's a basic right for residents to have their bins emptied by the council.

In fact, it's a statutory duty.

And I don't want to see it like Manchester with the rats and all the rubbish.

I want our place clean.

Council tax here.

There's a certain amount set aside for collection of refuse

and they should keep to that.

Bins, eh?

Nothing gets us so upset as the rubbish we have to put up with

when it comes to our rubbish collections.

You see, nationally, we're in a right two and eight.

Each council has to sort out its own rubbish,

which means our collection services are a postcode lottery.

To start with, are you a weekly,

fortnightly or monthly pick-up postcode?

Do you have one bin, two, three or more?

If you live in Gloucester, you've got five, Middlesbrough, seven.

But, if you live in Newcastle-under-Lyme,

you're expected to sort your rubbish

into nine - yes, nine! - different bags and boxes,

and you should award yourselves a bin-crazy postcode lottery prize.

But let me assure you of one thing.

Whatever bin lottery you live in,

you've got it easy compared with our Rossendale residents because,

no matter how much rubbish you've got,

and no matter how often it's picked up,

at least you've got a refuse collection service.

In Rossendale, the local council

have abolished all rubbish collections

from hundreds of rural households.

And it's such a postcode lottery that your neighbour,

200 yards down the lane, might be getting their bins collected

whilst you're expected to move your refuse yourself.

One victim of this rubbish postcode lottery is Liz Patmore.

I think it was sort of disappointment, really, anger.

In order to save money, the council has decommissioned the only

two dump trucks small enough to get up Rossendale's country lanes,

forcing council tax-paying locals, like Liz, to load up

their rubbish and drive it to one of 100 local collection points.

Well, it's very annoying, really.

It's one less benefit that we have from paying our council tax.

We aren't exactly an outlying place

because they're collected from 100 yards away from us.

They just couldn't come this little bit further.

It's a nightmare in the morning for children going to school

cos they've got to walk in the road to get around all the bags.

Bags that are left out at night, foxes are going into them.

It would be nice to see all these councillors get

out of their pretty little cars and come and collect all our waste,

put it in their cars and see how they like

the smell of rotting food and vegetation,

when everything leaks out

and they've got to start washing the backs of their cars out.

Just see how they like it.

I'm sure they wouldn't!

But Liz and the rest of the Rossendale residents

weren't prepared to be dumped on without a fight.

They formed a pressure group to try and get the council to reverse

their decision as group leader Lesley Ham explains.

I just cannot understand how anybody would want to make

a community dump rubbish on the streets.

Initially, Rossendale wouldn't tell us where all the collection points were.

Each individual outlying property knew where their own was but,

to get an overview, I personally did a Freedom of Information request

and I've just received one in the last couple of weeks.

The response, if you look at the little yellow circles

that are on this map, they are all the collection points.

Where is clean, green Rossendale in this?

What was the administration hoping to do in terms of tourism,

in terms of a living, working environment for its residents,

by dumping rubbish bags on every one of the main roads?

It was a postcode lottery because Rossendale made this decision,

even though we're part of Lancashire.

Nowhere else in Lancashire is doing the same thing

but we were going to be affected by a very foolish decision.

So Lesley decided to do something about it.

Two or three of us met and we decided that we would fund

a public meeting ourselves and that's what we did.

It was attended by just over a hundred residents

and the response was dramatic.

We had the petition that went from conception

to 1,900 signatures in about three weeks.

We hope that we've got a reversal of the decision tonight.

After three months of campaigning, our irate group of locals

have been invited to a meeting with the council.

They're hoping to persuade Rossendale officials

to trash their bin policy.

It just was a bad decision and, hopefully, this evening,

common sense will prevail.

If the decision doesn't get reversed,

then we're back on the campaign trail, 120%.

But will people power and common sense prevail?

A mere 70 minutes later, the verdict was given.

-We're all happy.

-We're all happy now!

-We're all happy.

We're going to get our bin collections back.

It's all been reverted.

Everything's back to normal again now.

We've got a unanimous decision to reverse

and I'm just happy to see the people from the valley,

the people from the outlying properties have come together in this.

This has been a people's action.

It means the community have been heard and,

if you want a big society, well, come to Rossendale

because we actually made it work for us.

Power to the people. It's brilliant! Brilliant outcome.

Absolutely fantastic.

Power to the people, indeed!

The residents of Rossendale have just shown us how to stand up

and fight this rubbish postcode lottery.

But it doesn't end there.

Later in the programme, we're going to bring you

yet another wasteful postcode lottery story.

Mention the words postcode lottery and most of us

would automatically think of the NHS because we've all heard stories

about how somebody is being denied the drugs they need, whilst a

neighbour just down the road with a different postcode would get them.

But our next story is slightly different because it's about

somebody who was getting the drugs they needed and then,

all of a sudden, due to the postcode lottery, they were snatched away.

Welcome to Salford, Lancashire, where Sue and Brendan Costello

are living with the consequences of a prescriptions postcode lottery.

We got married on the 5th of July and, during that week,

I went in to have my lumbar puncture done, as part of my honeymoon,

to always remember it!

It wasn't nice.

19th of August, I went for the results, just basically expecting

them to say I had a trapped nerve in my leg or something, and he didn't.

He sat there and told me I had MS.

I just burst out crying because that,

to me, was like the icing on the cake,

that was somebody telling me it was quite bad.

Then I went back to work.

Before she had MS, her personality was virtually the same

but her actual quality of life was completely different.

She was a keen walker.

We used to go to the Lake District a lot, go on some great walks.

She used to go shopping with her sister every weekend.

Sue has been living with her MS, multiple sclerosis,

for almost 10 years.

It's a degenerative disease which prevents the nerve cells

in the brain from sending clear commands to the spinal cord.

Its causes are unknown but its symptoms get progressively worse.

I can't do all the things I used to be able to do

which is very frustrating.

I drag my leg about,

I can't walk properly without having to steady myself.

My foot is just like a lump of dead meat.

I can't move that at all

and I have to wear like a shin pad to help me support my leg.

It's reduced the quality of life

because now all I seem to do is go to work every day.

I'm shattered when I come home, sit down.

My husband has to do everything for me.

I don't have any time for the little one.

We don't go out or do anything because I've got no energy,

because all my energy's reserved for going in to work.

So it's a vicious circle.

What made things worse for Sue was that,

like a number of other sufferers, none of the licensed drugs

currently prescribed for MS eased her symptoms.

Then, almost four years ago, Sue was offered an unexpected lifeline

when she heard of a new wonder drug called Sativex.

Sativex is a drug made from cannabis.

It is legal because all of the elements that would naturally

cause a cannabis high are removed first and it works

because the active ingredients that are left radically reduce

the pain in the inflamed nerve endings of MS sufferers.

Professor John Zajicek is an MS consultant

at Derriford Hospital in Plymouth

and a strong advocate of Sativex.

We have a lot of experience of seeing people that have been exposed

to cannabis-type drugs and Sativex is as much a cannabis-type drug

as any of the others that we've been working on.

And you get the same benefits from the patient perspective.

They have reduced spasms in their legs.

They have less stiffness, we call spasticity.

They have less pain.

It may help their waterworks and it can help other symptoms as well.

The longer they go on it, sometimes their symptoms gradually improve,

so much so that we're testing whether some of these drugs

actually might alter the progression of multiple sclerosis.

So keen was Sue to try Sativex,

she immediately signed up as a guinea pig for medical trials.

The first thing I noticed, having taken Sativex about

ten minutes later, I actually got pins and needles in my foot,

which was absolutely remarkable

and I can remember sitting there shouting for my husband,

shouting, "Brendan, Brendan, I've got pins and needles in my foot!"

She got so enthusiastic about things that she couldn't do

physically that she was seeing starting to happen again.

When I'd come home from work,

I wasn't as shattered and I'd be able to come home from work

and spend a bit of time, either with my little boy or with my husband,

or we'd go out or whatever, instead of being constantly worn out.

It just made such a massive difference.

The medical trials were successful

and Sativex was given a licence to be prescribed across the UK.

Sue was thrilled.

The day the drug became licensed, I wrote to my consultant

and asked him if I could now have this drug.

He wrote to my GP and said he recommends that, in my case,

Sativex would be beneficial in improving my symptoms and he would

appreciate it if the GP could prescribe it for me within the NHS.

But when the reply came from her local NHS primary care trust,

it exposed the cruellest of postcode lotteries.

Unfortunately, because my GP is in Salford,

Salford PCT won't support the funding of that drug, so I couldn't have it.

Having put her own health at risk and, having benefited others

by volunteering for medical trials,

Sue is now being denied Sativex, solely because of her postcode.

Sativex is a government-approved drug.

However, it is down to the primary care trust in every area to

decide if they wish to fund it.

At a cost of around £5 per day,

it compares unfavourably with other, cheaper MS drugs.

It might be the only medication that has given Sue relief from

her disease but, purely because of the postcode lottery,

she is currently being denied it.

It's one of the cruellest things I've ever seen put upon anybody.

How many do you want on your bread?

Just two, please.

It's reduced the quality of life

because my husband has to do everything for me.

I think it's very unfair. What is the difference?

Why should it make a difference where you live in the country

as to what treatments you're allowed to have?

But the health service postcode lottery means that it does.

And, as with every lottery, there are winners as well as losers.

A number of the primary care trusts do fund Sativex.

And, when the truck was licensed in 2010, Dr Zajicek was able to

prescribe it for some of his patients at his Plymouth PCT.

MS sufferer Susan Bence was profoundly grateful.

Until Dr Zajicek prescribed her Sativex,

she was seriously considering ending her life.

I was actually that bad and didn't know what to do with myself

that I had got to a stage where I said to my family,

"I just don't want to be here any more. I would like you, please,

"to book a flight and I want to go to Dignitas."

As a family, we just couldn't believe what she was saying,

and we just couldn't accept it.

We just would not accept it and tried to find different ways

of getting around this problem that she'd now given us.

They were appalled. Overwhelmed.

Couldn't believe it. Devastated.

Like I was.

Thankfully for Susan and her family,

Dr Zajicek was able to prescribe Sativex to her in October 2010.

The effects of the drug on Susan's condition

were immediate and profound.

Since now taking this drug Sativex, the quality of my life is

so much better, not only for me but for my husband and family as well.

I obviously have a better sleep pattern,

more restful, less spasticity,

and also my muscles are of a much better density now.

I can move around a lot better.

It's unbelievable. It changed our lives completely.

There was a time before she had Sativex

that sleeping with my wife was a nightmare.

It was like me sleeping on the edge of a cliff because every time

I used to turn over in the bed, it used to set all her pathic pains off

in her legs and she'd be screaming and crying all night.

So Sativex has settled all her pains down completely.

She more or less goes through the night and so do I.

But, for any MS sufferers thinking Plymouth PCT

is a beacon of hope in the fog of the postcode lottery,

Dr Zajicek has some unpleasant news for you.

The local commissioners decided that they would not commission

this drug and I've been told to stop prescribing it.

So I'm not allowed to write any new prescriptions for the drugs.

People that are already on it are able to receive their drugs

but I can't write any new prescriptions.

It's incredibly frustrating, not being able to help people

when there are drugs that may help them.

And it's not as though we're asking for huge quantities of money

or huge numbers of people here.

The numbers of people are very small.

Back in Salford, for Sue and her family,

the agony and the anger remain unresolved.

Faceless bureaucrats.

They can so comfortably sit behind their desk,

they so comfortably go to meetings,

they so comfortably make decisions about other peoples lives

without ever, ever having experienced such things.

To me, it's just sheer hypocrisy

because if it was something happening to them,

they'd be the first who'd be banging on the drum about

how they should be able to have it.

If I could get hold of one of the people from the PCT,

I would say to them, "You want to try living with this condition."

One of my local hospitals has just been granted to prescribe Sativex to

some patients who are terminally ill and I think, "Is that I've got to do?

"I've got to be ready for dying before I can have the medication

"that makes me better?"

It just seems so unfair.

When the Postcode Lottery team contacted NHS Salford,

they gave us the following statement.

Every day this week, we're going to bring you a bite-sized list

of Postcode Lottery fame and shame.

You know, winners and losers.

And the choice of subjects is so wide, you wouldn't Adam and Eve it.

Petrol prices.

They cause more complaints than virtually anything else,

and the price per litre varies from town to town

and even from forecourt to forecourt.

But you could also be a winner in this lottery, saving yourself as much as £200 a year.

For example, recent research showed that in Weston-super-Mare,

the price varied by 9p between two garages

that were only a few minutes apart,

and they also discovered that people could save nearly 11p per litre

just by popping over the border between Cornwall and Devon.

But the biggest variation of all was in North Wales,

where two garages in Wrexham, just five miles apart,

had a massive difference of 14p per litre.

That could save you nearly £10

every time you filled up an average family saloon.

Now, to make the postcode lottery work for you, shop around,

but make sure you don't spend more on petrol than you save!

These days, a lot of people are trying to eat more healthy, and save

a few quid at the same time, which means they're turning to allotments.

You know, those council-owned plots of land where your grandad

used to hide away from your Nan at weekends, sitting in his shed,

reading Fly Fishing by JR Hartley.

But demand has outstripped supply, which means if you want one,

it's now a postcode lottery.

Under the 1908 Small Holdings and Allotments Act,

every UK council is legally obliged to provide a sufficient number

of allotments for persons residing in its area who want one.

What that means in proper speak is that if you

ask your counsel for an allotment,

they're legally obliged to give you one,

or at least put you on your waiting list,

which is all well and good if you live in

the Midlands, Nottingham or North Shropshire,

where the average waiting time for an allotment is a mere five months.

However, if you live in Camden, north London, get to the back of a

very long queue because the average waiting time there is 40 years.

But what if you believe that your council are not fulfilling their obligations?

What if your counsel got rid of your local allotments,

promised to replace them and, a full 15 years later,

have still not delivered on those promises?

Would you take matters into your own hands?

This is Ashton-under-Lyne, a small suburb of Manchester,

where the mighty roar of the M60 motorway echoes across

raiding wastelands of rushes, ragwort and cabbages.

Some might even say illegal cabbages

because they've been grown by a crack team of guerrilla gardeners,

calling themselves Ashton Allotment Action.

On St George's Day 2011, after eight years of false dawns

and broken promises, Ashton Allotment Action decided

to invade a patch of land that they claim the council had

promised would become a brand-new allotment site.

When the motorway came through,

the council decided to development on all of the existing allotments.

They promised us in return an alternative allotment site.

This is the alternative allotment site

and it's still lying here unused, neglected.

And the reason why it's neglected is because, at the same time they set

it aside for the new allotments, the council handed the land over to a

development company and they've been in dispute over its use ever since.

15 years on, it's a no-man's-land of bracken and weeds, and the only

thing growing in Ashton-under-Lyne is the allotment waiting list.

There's over 370 people on the waiting list

for allotments in Ashton alone and we have no allotments in Ashton.

And so, after 15 years of frustration,

the garden guerrillas finally took up their tools,

claimed squatters' rights and began to dig in.

The land was very overgrown.

We've had to clear all of that weed growth

before we could start to cultivate it.

We're growing everything that most people want to eat.

Broccoli and red cabbage.

Onions.

Jerusalem artichokes.

Parsnips.

Blackcurrants.

Lots of potatoes.

And some apple as well.

You can grow lovely food and it's all growing all round us here.

It's ideal.

It's just that it should have been handed over to us

over seven years ago, before it became overgrown and neglected!

But while the fruit and veg are thriving...

Mm, they're lovely!

..the guerrilla gardeners are on stony ground.

As squatters, they can be served an eviction notice any day.

Still, with over 150 active members, the Ashton Allotment Action group

are determined to make hay while the sun shines.

I just come up here once or twice a week,

pitch the tent, just in case it rains.

Very rare.

No rumpy-pumpy in the tent!

But there's a silver lining to the guerrillas' cloud

and he's called Dave Morris.

Dave is from the National Society of Allotment and Leisure Gardens,

which was set up to preserve and

protect allotments for future generations to enjoy.

He's been supporting the group throughout their campaign.

How are things going then, Nigel?

Well, as you can see, we're still active here.

We've cleared what is probably a standard allotment,

250 square metres approximately.

Ashton's an area with what, 40,000 people?

And not a single allotment in it.

The ratio you'd normally find of allotments, you'd expect over 100.

The law on allotments basically says

that where a council or local authority parish

is aware that there is a demand for allotments,

they should provide sufficient allotments to meet the need.

It's not the strongest-worded law unfortunately.

It doesn't lay down such as a timescale,

that they must provide them within six months, a year, whatever,

and that is the get-out clause that councils use.

I don't know whether it'll be another eight years

but we'll still be here.

We're going to eventually have all of this site under cultivation.

It will take some while because we're doing it by hand.

It's quite hard work.

We'll go back every month for updates from the council

but we don't hold out much hope with them.

In the meantime, Nigel and his fellow guerrillas are determined

to show the council that they are prepared to dig for victory,

to overturn this postcode lottery.

Will you help me?

We've got some nice potatoes there, haven't we?

We're going to dig up a sample of this year's produce

and we're going to present it to Tameside council

so that they can see what the potential is for the land here.

We'd like to present these vegetables as a token to

Tameside Council and hopefully you could perhaps present that

to them at the council meeting tomorrow.

< Yeah, yeah, yeah. Lovely.

Right, thank you very much.

I've now passed on the vegetables.

They'll be presented to the council tomorrow at a council meeting.

While Nigel's veg box diplomacy aims to win over the council

through their stomach, Dave continues to be frustrated

by the development company

and the council's inability to use their heads

and just sit down and sort it out.

They were promised allotments here.

I've got maps which show it as allotments but the council are

saying they're still in negotiations with the developer about this.

I've been calling for a meeting with developers and council

to try and get them round a table for some months now,

with little or no success, quite frankly.

And so, a full 15 years after the first promises were made,

we have finally received the following separate statements,

from Stayley Developments Ltd and Tameside borough council.

Tameside council said:

And, about the Ashton Moss allotments, they said:

Stayley Development's response was:

Hey, guys, here's a bit of a radical suggestion for you.

Why don't you go and lock yourselves in a room, and don't come out

until you've sorted it out, once and for all?

Just like beautiful women with ugly footballers,

what goes hand-in-hand with double yellow lines?

Travel wardens, of course, and there are 23,000 of them

on our street, raking in a combined £400 million a year.

But, alongside politicians and bankers,

they're the most unpopular people in Britain.

Each year, throughout the UK over 4 million of us

are issued with a parking ticket and, when it comes to fines,

Westminster Council in London are a tough act to follow.

Last year, they issued almost half a million tickets and earned £32 million.

But, wherever you go, there's no escaping the parking police.

Or so you might think.

Welcome to Aberystwyth on the West Wales coast,

a pretty seaside town where,

thanks to the council's decision to abolish all of the traffic wardens,

some locals think they've won the postcode lottery.

As it stands at present,

I would say that there isn't actually any traffic wardens.

Well, I'm sorry if they've lost their job but,

as far as I'm concerned, I'm quite happy as things are,

because people in general, they park wisely.

You can have your car there for half a day and you don't get a ticket after two hours,

so you don't have to move the car.

So, whose brilliant idea was this?

In June last year,

Aberystwyth's three traffic wardens were laid off when the local police

handed over control of parking enforcement to the local council.

The police claim they gave the council two years' notice

and had no budget to pay the wardens' wages.

The local council also claimed they had no budget left either.

The end result is a free ticket to a parking postcode lottery.

To begin with, Dan Wells, who runs the local hardware store,

was rather pleased.

Initially, everyone thought, "Yes! The traffic wardens have gone,"

and they could park wherever they liked.

I thought it was brilliant but it turns out it's a nightmare.

And he's not alone.

I think it's absolutely ridiculous, the parking in town.

I had to drag a child out of the way

because a van was parking up on a pavement and reversing.

People park in disabled places without any badges.

It's in every driver's nature, if they see a parking space,

they'll take it and they'll leave their car there all day.

Quite often, we're been phoned by delivery companies saying

they can't deliver to us because they can't access the roads nearby.

As you can see here, there's a car parked on this corner illegally

and it's causing a lot of bother for any large vehicles trying to turn round the corner.

And you can imagine the trouble a lorry would have getting down here

who's carrying a few palettes for us.

We had a delivery driver turn up with a lorry and,

as he couldn't turn round the corner,

he had to park in the middle of the road.

Someone got quite irate with him, got out of the car,

it started escalating and they started shouting at each other,

at which point we did come outside and we called the police.

But it is causing a lot of people angst and causing

a lot of tempers to get frayed.

I've seen queues of traffic forming for ages and ages,

just because one bus can't get around the corner.

Since there hasn't been any traffic wardens, it's a job to park

because everybody's parking everywhere.

I think, personally, it's disgusting.

I say bring the traffic wardens back.

OK, so there's a bit of bad parking and the occasional

outbreak of anger but surely all this chaos is a small price to pay

when you compare it to the national parking prices postcode lottery.

For example, pulling up on a London street will cost you up to £4.40 an hour,

£3 an hour in central Aberdeen and £2 an hour in Walsall.

But come to Aberystwyth,

you can park where you like and it's absolutely free.

I bet these bikers love it.

We have here a designated area for us to park but, quite often,

the entrance just isn't usable.

We've got the main entrance into the designated bike area

and we've got a lorry parked practically on top of it,

making visibility to come in zero and,

if you were to use this to get out, again, there's danger.

I didn't see that vehicle come round the back of that until it appeared.

I had no warning of it whatsoever.

It's just not acceptable, the way people are behaving in the town.

Ouch! He's not very happy and neither is this fella.

Well, now there are no traffic wardens,

people are just parking everywhere.

Double yellow lines, as you can see,

they're parking on pavements, you name it, they're parking there.

It doesn't seem to be just parking-related issues.

The general attitude to driving has changed, where people are driving more lawlessly,

pulling out in front of you, cutting you up, things like that.

It's bad enough on a motorcycle at the best of times,

trying to go around a busy town,

but it's ridiculous when you've got double parking, vehicles moving out.

It's just compounded any problems that we had.

My perception of traffic wardens has changed.

I know part of their duty is to keep traffic moving,

rather than booking people for traffic offences and,

as that duty isn't being performed, of course traffic isn't moving,

and it's just bringing the town to gridlock in peak periods.

It leaves people who are visiting Aberystwyth for the first time

with a pretty poor opinion of the town, actually.

So there we have it.

In Aberystwyth, the general consensus is that traffic wardens

are angels and street life without them is hell.

The good news is that common sense has prevailed

and the traffic wardens will be back from next summer.

They may even be fitted with mini cameras to record any abuse

from irate members of the public.

You have been warned.

Earlier in the programme, we went to Rossendale,

a town where locals were expected to cart their own rubbish around

until the council saw sense and backed down.

This time we're heading south to another rubbish postcode lottery

where the council are trying to charge its green-minded citizens

for doing their bit for the environment.

We're going to Bridgwater in Somerset.

When you get stuck into a bit of spring cleaning or a spot of DIY,

what do you do with those carloads of unwanted plasterboard,

cardboard, old furniture, electrical goods, or broken toys?

Well, you pop down your local recycling centre of course.

Paid for by our council taxes, they're convenient and free

to every UK householder, with one exception,

the residents of Somerset.

There are 18 community recycling sites across Somerset.

14 of them are still free to use but, as of 2011,

four of them charge an entrance fee

of £2 per vehicle to dispose of your recyclables.

Many of the local residents think these charges are -

wait for it - rubbish,

especially a group of campaigners, the Bridgwater Trades Union.

The charges for the recycling centres in Somerset were

brought in on April the 1st of this year, 2011.

They run contrary to the rest of the country basically,

and, as this programme is called the Postcode Lottery,

that's really what we should be talking about now.

I pay £113 council tax per month

and I expect to get the same services I would find

across the border in North Somerset, Devon, Wiltshire or Dorset.

But we have massive support in the local community as well,

who are very opposed to the charges.

Recycling has improved greatly in Somerset over the last few years.

We've had a very strong record of 80% plus recycling.

This is just a straightforward backward step.

A straightforward backward step or a council being canny with the cuts?

This is Middlezoy, one of the four sites charging the

£2 a pop tipping tax, and this is Steve Read, managing director

of Somerset Waste and one of the brains behind the charges.

Going back a year ago, Somerset county council realised that

that it had to make quite considerable savings to its budget.

It started to look at how it might do that and one of the things that we

reluctantly looked at was closing some of our recycling centres.

We've got 18 here in Somerset which is a much larger ratio

than most other places in the country.

So, with reluctance, we proposed to close four of them,

including this one here at Middlezoy.

When we came out and talked to the communities affected, they said,

"Is there anything we can do instead of closing?"

They actually came up with the idea of saying,

"Could you impose a small charge?

"Would that be enough to keep the centres open?"

So we went away and looked at the legal situation

and concluded that that would be possible,

so charges were introduced here from April last year.

Fair enough, if the public themselves requested the tariff

and Somerset Waste agreed, then that's democracy in action.

But were the people in Somerset really happy about this?

Initially we had a number of people expressing a great deal of concern.

That has dropped off in the several months now that we've been

operating the sites with the charges.

Most people, when we've explained the reasons for the changes,

and they've understood that this is actually instead of closing

the site, obviously they'd prefer not to be charged

but they'd prefer to keep the site open.

So, are the anti-tipping tax campaign group really in a minority?

Our unscientific snap poll on the streets of Bridgwater

indicates an issue that still divides opinion.

I don't mind to be honest. Keeps these guys in a job.

Well, it's a bit outrageous seeing we pay so much council tax.

I think it'll be counter-productive because people will fly-tip.

I live a mile away, come here,

get rid of a van-load of rubbish for two quid.

It's fine. Otherwise, I've got to drive all the way to Taunton.

I think it's very irritating because it increases the amount of

fly-tipping that we're getting in my lane in particular.

We've seen old sofas and the like,

just being dumped in the ditches and, clearly, the council are going

to have to come and clear that away so, to me, that's an added cost.

Whilst opinions were divided on the streets of Bridgwater, it was the

perceived increase in fly-tipping that drew the most comments.

George from the campaign group took us on a ride

into the countryside to highlight this issue.

As you can see, it's a very picturesque area, very beautiful,

but unfortunately, suddenly we find that things are somewhat less than picturesque.

We have an old door, we have an old office chair,

lots of commercial/industrial type of waste,

children's toys and old wood.

On the other side of the bridge, we have a very similar problem.

We have tyres, an old jerry can, all stuff that could be recycled

but people choose instead to dump it.

George and the campaign group also see a fine irony

in the introduction of the tipping tax.

Well, the fly-tipping has increased.

It's less impactive because there are people going round

and collecting it a lot more than they used to.

But, of course, there is no saving because, instead of actually paying

people to run the site seven days a week, instead they're paying people

to get out and actually collect it in vans

and, presumably, take it to the sites themselves.

We expected to see an increase in fly-tipping because,

whenever we've made any changes to things like

opening hours in the past, that has resulted in an increase.

We hoped that it would drop off.

It's beginning to do that

and we do need to keep it in proportion as well.

The amount of material that's being fly-tipped in the county is

very, very small, compared to the material now that is no longer

coming through these sites due to the various changes that have been

made and the economic situation.

So the jury's definitely out on this story.

The council say it's a way of keeping a popular facility open

without it being a burden on the taxpayer.

But those who oppose it say it's a double-whammy postcode lottery.

Not only are the people of Somerset faced with a tipping tax,

but they also have to put up with the fact

that fly-tippers avoid it completely.

What a mess!

Well, that's all we've got time for but there are plenty more

scandals out there and some of them are stinkers.

And, on tomorrow's programme,

we smell a rat in Reading with a pest control postcode lottery.

They were on the kid's bed, in our wardrobes, urinating on our clothes.

We disclose the postcode lottery at the heart of the baby business...

It's not as if I'm even being greedy.

Just one child, that's all we want, isn't it?

That's it. It's not a lot to ask for, is it?

..and we reveal how you are being targeted in a junk mail postcode plot.

Stay lucky in the postcode lottery and, if you keep watching,

you'll definitely improve your chances of winning.

Subtitles by Red Bee Media Ltd