YOUR correspondent Pamela St Clair (Oxford Mail, July 20) comments on the new brown paper sacks provided for garden waste in the city.

I do agree with her that they are a very poor replacement for the green garden bags we used to have. I am very pleased to be able to tell her that it is not my sitting room she should use for storage but councillor John Tanner’s.

Mr Tanner, who has been the board member for a Cleaner Greener Oxford since Labour took over the city from the Liberal Democrats in 2008, refuses to recognise that these paper sacks hold much less garden waste than the bins for the same cost, as well as being much less convenient to use.

Liberal Democrats have repeatedly asked for a fairer service. At full council, on July 11, the entire Labour group opposed a request for the costs of bins and bags to be equivalent.

They also denied that, while there is a discount on brown bins for people on benefits, no such discount exists for the sacks.

So far the take-up of the new subscription service has been well below the take-up of the old green bag scheme.

It will not be environmentally beneficial for more people to burn their prunings or drive them to Redbridge, which must surely be the consequence of the current unfriendly scheme.

To be fairer to the residents, the cost should be the same for similar volumes of garden waste.

And people on benefits should receive the same discount whether they can store a brown bin or need to use the paper sacks.

Only then is it likely that most people will continue to benefit from the garden waste collection service.

JEAN FOOKS Liberal Democrat councillor for Summertown St Bernard’s Road Oxford