PROVISION of salt and grit bins in Wisbech has been exercising the minds of those town councillors on the finance and general purposes committee... and, goodness, what a tangled web it’s turned out to be.

Town clerk Erbie Murat will try and explain to councillors on Monday what’s happened but it seems that following agreement to set aside �1,000 to provide up to three such bins, one has already turned up.

However, the county council, which delivered it and consequently invoiced the council for it, was not asked to do so by Mr Murat or his council and so the hunt began as to who had placed the order.

“We have subsequently discovered that Councillor Simon King may have ordered the salt/grit bin and taken delivery of it,” says Mr Murat. “It would seem, therefore, that this grit bin is in Wisbech, but is not the property of Wisbech Town Council, and on that basis we have no legal responsibility for it.”

Cllr King, as you may well recall, lapsed his membership of the town council by missing too many meetings but he remains both a district and county councillor in the town.

Mr Murat will try and explain in more detail on Monday ownership of the bin in question but insists it belongs either to Cllr King or to the county council “and therefore it is their responsibility in law”.

The meeting will onsider a petition from residents to have the bin in their street but who pays for it has yet to be resolved.

Nothing, however, with Wisbech Town Council is as simple as it sounds so heaven knows what the outcome will be of grit-bin-gate!