THE council bin strikes were due to a lack of political leadership by Green councillors, rival politicians claimed at the Argus hustings event last night.

Conservative group leader Geoffrey Theobald said that Green councillors left the issue for council officers and union leaders to thrash out.

He was responding to a question from the floor from Green council candidate Rob Shepherd. He said the bin strike issue had been unfairly laid at his party’s feet when their actions averted the threat of the council being bankrupted by legal action.

Mr Shepherd said opposition politicians and the local media had unfairly blamed his party for the 2013 bin strike “knowing full well” the situation did not start under their administration.

He said that the Green administration resolved the problem of unequal pay and averted the possibility of the council being “bankrupted” by compensation claims.

Labour group leader Warren Morgan agreed his party had sought to resolve the issue when they were the minority administration in 2007, but were restricted from taking action by ongoing legal action elsewhere in the country.

Councillor Theobald said: “My biggest complaint with the Green Party on this issue is that it seemed to me there was a lack of clear leadership.

“It was council officers talking with the trade unions, it was council officers speaking to the media.

“It shouldn’t have been council officers, it should have been elected members, it should have been the member with responsibility in this area leading on it but he wasn’t there.”

Sue Shanks, the Green Party election campaign co-organiser, defended her party’s approach to the negotiations claiming that politics would have got in the way.

She said: “It was about equal pay for council workers, that was the issue.

“To have politics involved too much in this process was not necessarily the right thing to do with the public opinions around strikes.”