A row over how a tip in the north of the island should be funded has intensified with Bride Commissioners saying they won’t be ‘bullied’.

The commissioners have reacted angrily to a letter it received from the remaining representatives of the Northern Civic Amenity Site (NCAS) joint committee board.

In the correspondence, the NCAS board says it plans to send a letter to Bride residents ‘making them aware’ of how rates for the site are collected.

A civic amenity site, similar to a household waste recycling centre, is a facility where the public can dispose of and recycle household waste.

There are four such sites located on the Isle of Man - northern, southern, western and eastern.

Bride Commissioners stopped contributing to the Northern Civic Amenity Site – operated by Ramsey Commissioners - on March 31 this year over a dispute around costs, arguing its residents were paying up to three times more than other parishes for the service.

It had been contributing around 14% of the running cost of the NCAS – the full cost is £480,000.

The letter from the NCAS board says that when Bride originally raised concerns in 2023 over how much it was paying, representatives should have formally written up proposals and put them to a vote.

This was carried out, along with a number of options put forward by Bride Commissioners, the letter states. However, the objections were dismissed by the rest of the board in September 2023

The correspondence goes on to say that Bride later did not send a representative to subsequent NCAS board meetings before submitting a letter via an advocate in March this year confirming its intention to leave the scheme.

The board has now effectively accused Bride of hypocrisy by continuing to accept commercial rate revenue – generated largely to the sand and gravel quarry at Cranstal – while simultaneously complaining that those commercial rates have bumped up the rateable value of the parish.

But Bride Commissioners has calculated that it is paying up to three times more than any other parish for its residents to use the tip.

The NCAS board has now warned that central government could now step in and take away commercial rate revenue.

The letter said: ‘Without resolution, there is the potential that central government will see this as an opportunity to centralise quarry activity around the island and to absorb the associated income, thereby leaving parishes, such as Bride, Malew, etc. having to increase their domestic rates.’

At the end of the letter, the board invited Bride Commissioners to meet to discuss the matter.

However, the commissioners have dug their heels in, claiming the letter is ‘littered with factual inaccuracies’ and outlined what it sees as an unfair system.

In their reply, published on Facebook, Bride Commissioners say: ‘Bride residents were paying two to three times more than the other parishes to fund this facility (the tip).

‘A Ramsey commissioner was recently on Manx Radio complaining they had to spend 20% of their budget on waste. Bride was spending 85% of total rates income before we left.

‘This was not fair then and it would not be fair now on those terms, especially as we can demonstrate Bride generated less than 1% of waste at the site.’

The letter went on to label the NCAS Joint Board’s move as ‘democratic sabotage’.

It said: ‘Our rates are the lowest on the island because we are a modest local authority with few facilities and no grandiose ambitions.

‘Threatening to interfere in parish affairs and boasting of this intention to our national parliament is tantamount to democratic sabotage. Bride will not be bullied, cajoled or brought to heel.’

Earlier this month, the remaining members of the board say they need the Department of Infrastructure (DOI) to provide financial support to cover the running costs of the tip, asked it for £67,000 - the amount that Bride Commissioners was paying before it pulled out.

The letter says that without the funds from the Department of Infrastructure, the board will have to ‘exit the site’.