Cheshire East Council has announced details of a subscription service which means residents will have to pay annual fee if they would like their garden bins to continue being collected.
The subscription service for green waste collections is planned to go live in January next year and By opting-in to the service, residents can continue using their garden bin to recycle their green waste and will pay a proposed annual subscription fee of £56 for it to be collected.
The scheme – details of which will be considered by the council's environment and communities committee later this month – follows approval of the council's medium-term financial strategy for 2023/24 to 2026/27, which was consulted on in January this year.
Councillor Mick Warren, chair of Cheshire East Council's environment and communities committee, said: "The council continues to face significant financial pressures and there is an overall £20m funding gap to fill. We therefore have no choice but to look to alternative sources of revenue generation.
"The collection of garden waste is not a core service that councils are required to provide – and the costs associated with it have risen considerably – but it is our wish that we continue to make this service available to residents, while also ensuring we can make required savings of around £4m.
"We can do this by introducing an annual subscription service – something which more than 65% of local authorities across England have already done including our neighbours in Cheshire West and Chester, with many of these schemes having been in place for several years.
"We do of course recognise the pressures on people's household finances, which is why residents will only pay for the service if they opt-in to the scheme and it remains free for residents to dispose of their garden waste at our household waste recycling centres.
"We also continue to encourage residents to consider trying home composting – it is an excellent and environmentally-friendly way to limit food waste and has huge benefits to people's gardens."
The annual scheme is expected to open to subscriptions in October and go live in January.
Residents who opt-in will have their garden bins emptied as per their usual schedule and will be sent a specialist sticker to attach to their bin, which will feature a unique reference and is designed to fray and tear when removed to prevent them being reused by others.
A report on the green waste subscription, where councillors will be asked to decide on the implementation details of the scheme, will be discussed at the council's environment and communities committee on 27 July.
Comments
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I guess I’ll have to go back to regular bonfires again on top of joining with the local residents to collect and burn the inevitable additional fly tipping.
Can’t the annual increases in council tax keep up with Cheshire East too exec salary rises?
We've just had to fork out a 5% increase in Council Tax and now this as yet unspecified additional charge. It's outrageous.
The police have had significantly above inflation increases over the past several years and no one knows what this increase is being spent on. Perhaps instead of giving money hand over fist to themselves and other public servants, without our approval, maybe the Cheshire East council needs to do the basics effectively and efficiently, and get rid of the unnecessary and unwanted 'services'. For example, how many diversity officers do they employ at our expense and when were we asked if we want them?
Cheshire East Conservative Group members have now formally challenged the decision. The group announced this week a referral request of the decision had been submitted.
If the request is accepted by the Council’s Monitoring Officer, the decision will be reviewed at the next meeting of full council. A total of 21 of the 39 North West local authorities currently charge for garden waste collections, with the subscription costing £37.80 on average.