Eric Pickles MP, the former Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and weekly waste collections advocate, is to receive a knighthood for his political services.
The Knight Bachelor award reportedly recognises ‘his service as an MP and, before that as a Council Leader [of Bradford Council] and councillor in local government’.
It was announced today (22 May) that the Queen ‘has been pleased to approve that the honour of Knighthood be conferred upon the Rt Hon Eric Pickles MP’.
Speaking earlier today, Pickles - who has already changed his Twitter handle to Sir Eric Pickles - said: “I am delighted with the honour and look forward to what lies ahead for me.”
Really pleased https://t.co/GKDcO84Zed
— Sir Eric Pickles (@EricPickles) May 22, 2015
Pickles biography
Pickles was born and brought up in Keighley, West Yorkshire, and supported the Communist Party as a teenager, until the Soviet Union invaded Czechoslovakia in 1968, when Eric joined the Conservative Party.
He became National Chairman of the Young Conservatives in 1980 and was a local councillor on Bradford Council, for which he was Leader from 1988-1990.
Pickles has been MP for Brentwood and Ongar since 1992.
Following time as Shadow Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government, in July 2007, he was appointed Chairman of the Conservative Party in the build-up to the 2010 general election. He became Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government in May 2010.
Whilst in this role, he championed the use of weekly waste collections, which he called a ‘basic right’.
In 2012, Pickles set up a £250-million Weekly Collection Support Scheme to help local authorities support the implementation or reinstatement of weekly collections. However, this was largely viewed as a failure, as none of the 85 successful bids have actually reverted back to weekly residual waste collections because of it.
In 2014, Pickles followed up the support scheme with controversial weekly collection guidance, dubbed the 'Bin Bible', to ‘show how [English] councils can deliver a comprehensive and frequent rubbish and recycling collection service, and deliver practical savings from common sense steps that do not harm the quality of the service that local taxpayers receive’.
Despite the popularity of alternate weekly collections with local authorities, and evidence suggesting that they can boost recycling rates, Pickles told the Daily Mail last year the he was also looking at how to amend the Household Waste Recycling Act 2003 to set down new ‘minimum standards’ that could make it 'more difficult' for local authorities to offer fortnightly collections. However, this has not yet been pushed through the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG), and it is not clear whether Pickles’s replacement as Minister for State for Communities and Local Government, Greg Clark, will carry on Pickles’s weekly collections campaign.
Find out more about Eric Pickles.
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