Coronavirus has kicked a controversial scheme to slap a £40 charge on Atherstone and district households for collecting their green bins "into the long grass".

North Warwickshire Borough Council has shelved the June 1 launch until next year, admitting the community has enough to worry about with the spreading pandemic.

Council deputy leader David Wright said services were being "stretched" and refuse collection is likely to suffer "disruption" over the coming weeks due to the impact of Covid-19 on staffing levels.

The plan to charge for garden waste collection, revealed by Nub News last month, brought "angry" complaints from residents.

What the local authority's Labour opposition couldn't reverse at committee stage has been stopped by the devastating knock-on effects of the virus.

In a statement to Nub News, Councillor Wright said: "Due to the country's ongoing battle with coronavirus causing services to be stretched and the inevitable financial impact on the public, the council has made the decision to postpone the introduction of this service until April 2021.

"The North Warwickshire community, like the rest of the country, has a huge weight on its shoulders right now and so we don't feel that this an appropriate time to introduce a change to the current service.

"I'd like to encourage the whole community to follow the advice from the Government and stay at home."

Labour members on the North Warwickshire authority fought to stop what they saw as a "stealth tax" with Councillor Jack Deakin arguing: "A sum of £40 a year may not seem like much to some, and perhaps some of us in here could perhaps weather paying it, but for some that simply isn't the case."

Labour colleague, Councillor Dave Parsons, joined in the opposition rebellion, adding: "This is a charge already being levied. There are alternatives.

"This is a surcharge and effectively a stealth tax.

Urging the full council to "think again", he added: "Those most vulnerable are being persecuted again," complaining it was shifting the burden of taxation away from central government and piling it onto local government.

But at the February full council, the ruling Tory administration pressed ahead with the new payment scheme, saying the decision had "not ben made lightly or with any enthusiasm", but as a direct result of pressures on budgets.

It pointed to neighbouring authorities in Nuneaton, Tamworth and Hinckley, along with 59 per cent of UK local councils, already charging for green bin collection and in addition there is no statutory requirement to collect garden waste from households – only recycling in red bins and residual waste in black ones.

Factoring on a 55 per cent take-up in North Warwickshire the authority had hoped to see an income in the range of £377,000 and £514,000 a year.

The council will now continue to collect garden and food waste fortnightly in a 240 litre green lidded bin at annual cost of delivering the garden waste collection to every home in the borough which is just short of £500,000.

In 2018 the authority introduced the Extra Garden Waste Service allowing residents to choose to have more than one green bin emptied at an annual fee of £40 per bin. Some 461 households are signed up to the service, producing an income of £17,000.

Footnote: However, the council has suspended bulky waste collections until further notice to "protect staff and in line with