The session was chaired by LARAC’s John Coates, with speakers including James Collingridge, Amey Partnership manager, Peterborough council; Darren Moore and Caroline Roffey from Hinckley and Bosworth borough council; and Ben Tozer, product specialist for online Direct Debit provider, Go-Cardless.
Peterborough
Mr Collingridge explained how Peterborough council had introduced charges for garden waste of £39 per year which is collected fortnightly. This service was previously provided for free.
Despite minimal responses during a consultation period, Mr Collingridge said when the chargeable service was introduced the council received complaints ‘in the thousands’.
According to Mr Collingridge, the cost of providing the service for free for the city was £800,000 per year.
He said, following introduction in 2014, there was a 30% take-up of the new service compared to original take-up across the city.
He added: “What is quite interesting is we’ve seen 60% of the previous tonnage which means people who have signed up are obviously people who were engaged in the system before.
“The current tonnage is 7,644 and we have annually saved so far the £800,000. We are getting very positive comments now about how easy it is to sign up and people are happy with the scheme.”
In the first year around 19,000 residents signed up, there are now around 22,000, he said.
And, he said the council had not noticed an increase in garden waste fly tipping. Residents still have the option to take the garden waste to HWRCs and discounted home compost bins were available.
Hinckley & Bosworth
Ms Roffey, head of street scene services at Hinckley and Bosworth borough council in Leicestershire, explained how the council had decided to introduce a charge for garden waste collection after its recycling credits for green waste were taken away.
Following a survey, 40% of residents said they would be happy to pay £35 to retain the service. The new service was introduced which saw garden waste collected fortnightly for £24 per year, along with an increase in council tax.
Ms Roffey talked about some of the difficulties encountered when the new service was introduced. In particular, complications with the council’s IT system during sign up.
Despite this, Mr Moore, the council’s waste and business development manager, said the local authority had managed to recover the finances to cover the loss of credits.
Mr Moore said the 76% of eligible residents subscribed, equating to around 31,000 bins. He said: “We only lost 21,000 tonnes of our garden waste so overall that was a loss of about 2%.”
The two officers explained that the choice to collect all of the bins used in the previous service was costly for the council and around 2,000 bins were recovered.
Other topics discussed in the workshop were whether to enforce garden waste disposed of in the black residual waste bin; the potential threat from private organisations setting up a service to undercut the council; and, how much to charge for a second container.
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