USUALLY when a Chronicle reporter heads out to undertake a vox pop, street interviews with passers-by about a news topic; there will be a variety of opinions given. But two recent voxes in Alresford and Bishop’s Waltham at the weekend bucked that trend. People were asked about the proposed closures of the recycling centres in those towns due to cutbacks at Hampshire County Council. People had either never used the centres and had no view or they thought the closure idea was a very bad one.

An increase in fly-tipping is inevitable. A letter from county council leader Rob Humby in this newspaper disputes the assertion that fewer tips means more people dumping their trash at the side of the road. Cllr Humby cites statistics to back this view but we all know the dangers of those things. Common sense tells you otherwise, as happened when these facilities were made harder to access during the Covid lockdown.

One sympathises with the county’s chronic financial problems but a billion pound-plus authority should be able to find savings elsewhere.