DCLG pledges not to drop weekly collection focus

The Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) is looking at further options for weekly collections with the aim of forcing more councils to increase the frequency of their waste services.

A spokeswoman for DCLG today (March 18) confirmed the Departments stance following comments made by communities secretary Eric Pickles that weekly collections are a fundamental right and that he was looking at introducing minimum standards for local collections.

In an interview with the Daily Mail published yesterday (March 17), it was reported that Mr Pickles said he wanted to amend the Household Waste Recycling Act 2003 to make it more difficult to do fortnightly collections and set out the type of collection that had to be made weekly.

The newspaper quoted the minister as saying: There are lots of councils who like to pretend they have no alternative to weekly collections. My job is to place local authorities in a position where they have to take a decision on whether they want weekly collections or not.

Were a year from the general election. We now need to consider what policies a majority Conservative government would take.

Options

Speaking to letsrecycle.com, a spokeswoman for the Department said: It would be fair to say we are looking at further options for weekly collections.

The pledge to increase the pressure on councils over the issue follows the publication of the Departments controversial bin bible earlier this year, which argues for weekly collections of residual waste and seeks to bust 10 myths in favour of less frequent collections (see letsrecycle.com story).

Mr Pickles also launched DCLGs 250 million Weekly Waste Collection Fund in November 2012 (see letsrecycle.com story), which he claims has safeguarded weekly collections for six million English homes by offering financial support to 85 local authorities to introduce such schemes.

Wales

In addition, the Department has been at loggerheads with the Welsh Government over waste collections, with DCLG minister Brandon Lewis last week (March 11) criticising official policy in Wales forcing councils to collect waste on a fortnightly basis, with some even considering monthly collections (see letsrecycle.com story).

This led to the Welsh Government hitting back at DCLG yesterday (March 17), telling Mr Lewis to get his facts right as it said fortnightly collections are not an official policy in Wales, but have been adopted by most Welsh authorities (see letsrecycle.com story).