Council opens lid on charging £40 to collect green bins in Atherstone with a proposed gardeners' club to 'offset the cost'

Councillors are proposing refusing to collect thousands of green bins from Atherstone and district in future without householders forking out an annual fee of £40.

Policy makers are being asked tonight to approve a new payment scheme for the area's current garden waste service that could have a £1 million turn-round effect on North Warwickshire Borough Council's finances in the coming years.

To sweeten the pill of implementing the plan, a report to the local authority's Executive Board suggests launching a borough-wide gardeners' club to "add value and offset the cost to residents of charging for garden collections".

The "enterprising idea" involves providing discount vouchers or promotions with local garden centres to encourage sign up, the committee report adds.

The proposals comes as research by the Local Government Information Unit reveals North Warwickshire, like 97 per cent of councils in England, will to make significant cuts to revenue budgets in 2020/2021 through a combination of cost savings and increasing fees and charges.

A report by Richard Dobbs, the borough council's Streetscape corporate director, recommends introducing a charge for garden waste collection from June 1 this year.

If agreed a further report detailing how the service will be promoted, introduced and delivered be brought before the next Community and Environment Board meeting.

The council currently collects garden and food waste fortnightly in a 240 litre green lidded bin and the annual cost of delivering the garden waste collection to every home in the borough 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.

The report states there is no statutory requirement to collect garden waste from households and 59 per cent of UK local authorities who collect garden waste now charge for the service.

It is recommended an optional annual charge of £40 per green bin is levied in line with the council's existing charge for additional green bin collections – and other Warwickshire and neighbouring authorities.

Councillors have been told the new payment scheme launched on June 1 will be "well into the growing season", bringing the new service into line with the current Extra Garden Waste Service.

If approved council officers could work with county council colleagues to promote home composting and the use of household waste recycling centres as an alternative to paid-for collections.

Neighbouring authorities have been canvassed over their experience in introducing charges for garden waste collections, the reports goes on

Hinckley and Bosworth Council, which charges £24, reported a five per cent reduction in garden waste with no impact on refuse tonnage whereas both Tamworth and Lichfield authorities, both charge £36, reported a 30 per cent reduction in garden waste tonnage and a small seasonal increase in refuse tonnage.

The average reduction in garden waste tonnage was 15 per cent.

Results suggest residents making the greatest use out of the green bin sign-up to the service continue to use it while those who do not produce great quantities of garden waste find an alternative method of disposal.

No councils reported an increase in garden waste fly-tipping.

Local authorities cannot make a charge anyway for food waste collection and officers are recommending continuing to allow residents to recycle food waste in the green bins while making it clear the authority does not make a charge for this collection.

The most dramatic proposal in the scheme involves setting up a North Warwickshire Gardeners' Club.

The enterprising idea would "add value and offset the cost to residents of charging for garden collections involves providing discount vouchers or promotions with local garden centres to encourage sign up", the report says.

Officers report initial discussions with the garden centre have been "positive".

Further talks will be required, the report adds, but the intention is to provide a scheme where the value of vouchers would equal or exceed the cost of the service "if possible".

If residents signed up to take full advantage of the discounts linked to membership, this would have the net effect of saving the cost of the collection charge.

Neighbouring authorities have experienced between half and three quarters of properties with gardens sign up for their chargeable collection schemes.

The £40 charge per bin, which has a VAT element of £6.66, has the potential to realise income in excess of the current expenditure.

A 50 per cent take-up by 14,179 households in the borough would produce an income of £472,586 to a 70 per cent ceiling – 19,851 households – of £661,634.

On that basis, the revised service is set to save the council between £470,000 and £652,000 a year.

However, the first-year start-up costs of around £110,000 of implementing the scheme would have to be funded by using earmarked reserves and existing budgets and the likely net income therefore would be in the range of £375,000 to £514,000.

The council says it wouldn't "immediately" recall the unpaid green bins as "residents may change their mind and wish to sign up later".

It is proposed residents continue to be given the option to request the collection of a spare green bin.

"The pressures on the council's budgets are extremely high. The proposed charge would generate additional revenue from a non-statutory service, thereby protecting the council's ability to continue to provide other essential services," the report concludes.

If the Gardeners' Club proposal proves successful, many residents will be able to offset the cost of subscribing to the service through savings at local retail outlets.

On top of that town halls will need to roll out food waste collections to millions more homes across the country under Government plans to stop leftovers going to landfill, new figures show.

Atherstone and district is among more than 13.4 million English households where kitchen scraps are not picked up separately from the black bin rubbish, an analysis of data suggests.

But the Government has set out plans in its Environment Bill for food waste to be collected separately from all households by 2023 to cut the amount of food wasted and tackle greenhouse gas emissions.

A recent consultation showed that if all local authorities provided food waste collections, 1.35 million tonnes more food waste would be picked up by 2029, cutting greenhouse gases from food rotting in landfill by an estimated 1.25 million tonnes a year, officials said.

Local councils say they need funding to bring in universal food waste collections – and practical challenges have to be overcome.