A CAMPAIGNING councillor is urging health and safety chiefs to have a change of heart on new rules which ban the sale of secondhand items from the area's tips

A CAMPAIGNING councillor is urging health and safety chiefs to have a change of heart on new rules which ban the sale of secondhand items from the area's tips.Councillor Peter Burden, who represents Backwell, has submitted a motion to the next meeting of North Somerset Council the authority's leaders to review the policy which stops people buying secondhand items from its civic amenity sites.For several years staff at the tips have collected good quality items taken to the dump, put them in a container and then sold them on to bargain hunters.But the service was stopped this year because the council said it could not guarantee the safety of the items being sold.The move caused an outcry among local residents, who described the move as 'health and safety gone mad'.A petition signed by hundreds of angry residents from across the district is also due to be handed to North Somerset at its meeting on February 20.Councillor Burden drew up the motion after being inundated with complaints from people who bought things from the tip.Councillor Burden said: "The Government's waste strategy is reduce, reuse, recycle and then dump."This is a strategy that North Somerset Council has signed up to, but is not following."It is sheer madness to just throw things away when they could be used by someone else."I did put questions to council before about why the change was introduced but was just fobbed off with woolly answers."I have continued to receive a lot of complaints from people who used to use the facility and that is why I am campaigning fiercely to get this ridiculous rule changed.