Three Rivers council to begin charging for green waste

The local authority is imposing a £35-per-year subscription fee for the service from July 2016, which had previously been provided free of charge.

Councillors approved the measure at a meeting in January, following months of deliberation.

At the January meeting, a report by officers claimed that implementing the scheme in July would “maximise revenue to the Authority, as it will ensure that residents pay to have their garden waste collected for three-quarters of the year”.

Concerns were also raised that a charge for the service could result in residents placing a higher proportion of the material in their residual waste bin, which the council claimed would have a negative impact on recycling rates and affect its payments from Hertfordshire county council for landfill diversion.

As a result, the council has looked to improve enforcement action to prevent residents ‘wrongfully disposing of garden waste’.

Composting

The council has in recent years consistently achieved one of the highest composting rates in England, stacking up a record-setting green rate of 43.35% in 2013/14.

And, in 2014/15, Three Rivers achieved an overall recycling, reuse and composting rate of 63.2%, making it the fifth-top performing council in England. Of this, around 37% was made up of green waste composting.

The council runs its collection service in-house and sends its garden waste for processing at West London Composting Ltd in Harefield, Middlesex.

However, residents were in October consulted on the possibility of moving away from its free, fortnightly service towards charging up to £70 a year due to ‘increasing financial pressure’ from local government funding cuts

More than 4,000 residents responded to the consultation survey, of which 90% said they found the service ‘good’ or ‘very good’ and 78% said they would prefer to pay for the service rather than see it discontinued altogether.

According to the survey results, three quarters (76%) of respondents would be prepared to pay up to £35 a year for garden waste removal. This drops to just under half (47%) who would be prepared to pay up to £50 and a quarter (26%) that would be prepared to pay up to £70 a year.