NEXT time you’re drumming your fingers on the dashboard, frittering away a precious half-hour of your life in the queue for the tip, think about this.

The van in front of you might be driven by a volunteer from Oxfam, or Mencap, or Alabare, or any number of worthy causes, disposing of the unavoidable waste from one of our charity shops.

From September, they’ll have pay up to £70 a year for the privilege. That fee will allow them a dozen visits. Presumably the number will be strictly monitored.

27 hard-up schools and seven housing associations will face the same charges.

This is Wiltshire Council in action. All heart, isn’t it?

The amounts involved may not seem much. I suppose 70 quid is what a charity would make from selling three dozen tops or skirts.

But this is one of those apparently piffling decisions waved through up at Trowbridge Towers without any real understanding of life lower down the food chain. It’s said to be a response to public complaints about the huge tailbacks since they cut the dumps’ opening hours.

Caring cabinet member Toby Sturgis gave the order under his delegated powers. But it was left to his portfolio holder for waste – a kind of Junior Minister for Junk, if you like – to defend it. “I am genuinely sympathetic to the charities,” said councillor Jerry Wickham, “and what we are saying is that we are not stopping them from using the facilities.”

That’s big of him.

“I am of the belief that the centre should be offered to the people it is for, such as householders who are paying their council tax,” he waffled on, as if believing that householders – many of whom donate time as well as cast-offs to charity - will think he’s done a good thing.

“Any revenue we get in will be offset to other costs we have elsewhere.”

Aha! That’s it! £40,000 a year is what that “any revenue” is expected to amount to. So next time you drop off a sackful of the children’s outgrown clothes, or the contents of that decadesold suitcase from Auntie Mabel’s attic, you can feel extra good, knowing that your particular donation is supporting not just one good cause, but two.

The second being our local authority, forever holding out its little hand like some corporate Oliver Twist and begging: “Please, sir, can we have some more?”

That’s £40,000 a year taken from organisations staffed by volunteers who work their guts out to help the less fortunate members of society.

And they’ll still have to dump their waste. So how will that reduce the queues?

Wiltshire Council – where charity begins at home.

anneriddle36@gmail.com