Town councillors have this week formally thrown out plans for a £14,000 project that would have seen Burnham-On-Sea become one of the first towns in the UK to tackle dog fouling with a high-tech scheme.
At a meeting on Monday, town councillors unanimously voted not to proceed with the scheme. It follows a recommendation from the council’s Policy and Finance Committee in June not to proceed, reported here.
GeoVation, a project run in conjunction with the Ordnance Survey, had put forward proposals for Burnham that would have seen the introduction of a smartphone app informing dog owners where waste bins are sited in the town and also introduce an anaerobic digestion system to turn dog waste into renewable energy.
However, Cllr Ken Smout said: “It would be a huge price to bear. The proposal was such a weighty document that you need a canine degree to understand it. I’d hoped they’d put forward a more practical, affordable scheme.”
And Cllr Tom Nicholls added: “It’s difficult to quantify the benefit that we would gain.”
Councillors voted to take no further part in the project. Burnham would have become one of just four locations across the UK using the scheme.
Earlier this year, the Town Council’s plans to lift a dog ban on part of Burnham’s beach during the summer months was scrapped after public opposition, as we reported here.
