IT’S entirely possible that I am wrong with this analysis, but of all the services delivered by local councils, it’s the bin collection, more than anything else, that gets people worked up.

Especially when it comes to the whole issue of frequency of collection.

Any district or borough councillor will tell you it’s right up there on their elector’s list of priorities. Specifically, any suggestion that the service should go fortnightly is met with howls of protest.

Refuse and street cleansing in most of rural Dorset – including Christchurch, East Dorset, West Dorset and Purbeck, is now handled by the Dorset Waste Partnership, which was set up in April to provide a more efficient and cost effective operation. Household rubbish is still picked weekly in these areas as it is in Bournemouth and Poole which have separate arrangements.

But more than half of all local councils in England have shifted to fortnightly in an effort to encourage more recycling, though this trend has proved massively unpopular. It has led to an increase in vermin and fly-tipping say critics.

Now the government is apparently going to encourage these local councils to revert to weekly collection and offer them financial incentives to do so, similar to the council tax-freezing scheme earlier this year.

Someone needs to explain to me exactly how this U-turn is designed to meet the recycling targets for household waste or deal with the growing waste disposal crisis in this country.

Or indeed how this squares with Mr Cameron’s promise to make this “Britain’s greenest ever government.”