Basic right or not, it appears that councils have simply ignored Mr Pickles. A survey of more than 100 local authorities in England found that not one intended to switch back to weekly collections and a dozen were actively preparing to move to a fortnightly service. This will mean that, for the first time since 1875, more than half of households will have to wait two weeks for their bins to be emptied. Now there is pressure on Mr Pickles to reaffirm the intent of the 1875 Act with a new law making it an explicit requirement on councils to collect rubbish every week. But how could he do that while at the same time promising to loosen Whitehall's grip on the throat of local government?  Here, then, is the great conundrum for Mr Pickles and his colleagues. On the one hand, they want to give councils greater control over their budgets and services, free of central diktat. They call it localism. Yet these laudable ambitions are now colliding with political reality, as councils blame Government cuts for all the bad decisions they now say they have to take, including the retention of fortnightly bin collections.  One reason is that councils cannot raise local taxes to make up the shortfall in spending brought about by budget restraints, because these have been frozen by the Government. This in itself is a restriction on local decision-making (though councils could find the extra cash by scrapping the hundreds of thousands of non-jobs that continue to grow like Topsy, despite the need for austerity).  The Government is also preparing to announce that councils will henceforth be forbidden from fining householders who put out their refuse on the wrong day or in the wrong box. You can guarantee that this ban will simply be used by the councils to justify further cuts.  The Coalition has discovered that local devolution looks less appealing from a lofty perch in Whitehall than it did in opposition. Ministers may preach the gospel of localism – yet they still want to retain control over matters that might make them look bad, such as tax rises or fortnightly bin collection. But why on earth should a Cabinet minister be responsible for the regularity of a local refuse service? By giving the impression that this is something that should be willed from the centre, Mr Pickles merely reinforces local irresponsibility, where bad things are blamed on the government, while good things are somehow the council's achievement.  The logic of localism is to let local councillors raise the money for their own refuse service and run it as they see fit on the basis of a manifesto put before the electorate. They should will the means – including, if necessary, wholesale privatisation – and they should take the rap if it all goes wrong.  Greater local decision-making must go hand in hand with proper lines of accountability, otherwise it is meaningless guff. Voters need to be clear where responsibility lies, because when a council stubbornly refuses to do what most local taxpayers want it to do, the remedy is in their hands: kick it out of office.
If Cameron is committed to devolving power, he should leave refuse to the    councils, writes Philip Johnston.