Oswestry Borough Council praised for efforts to improve recycling

The report, part of the government's best value initiative, praised the council for its public satisfaction – amongst the top 25% of district councils nationwide – and its attempts to improve its recycling.

“Oswestry council has recently introduced a kerbside collection service for recyclable materials and is actively developing a partnership with Shropshire County Council,” said Adrian Miles, Central Region commissioning inspector.

Inspectors recommended bringing Oswestry's worst recycling sites, such as the one at Gobowen (top), in line with its best, such as that at St Martin's (bottom)

Oswestry Borough Council introduced a pilot kerbside collection system for paper, cans and compostable material during September 2001. This covered 1,000 homes and was extended to 10,000 houses – almost a third of the borough – from July 2002 with a further 4,000 houses being included from April 2003.

Mr Miles said: “Early signs from the kerbside collection service are positive and indicate that the council will significantly increase the amount of household waste that is recycled.”

Inspectors only gave the council a rating of one star, however, out of a possible three, because recycling rates are still in the bottom 25% of district councils in England. The council has actually seen recycling rates drop from 6.47% in 1999-2000 to 5.78% the following year before climbing slightly to 6.2% from 2001-02. This heralds a real struggle to get to Oswestry's statutory performance standards of 12% recycling by 2003/04 and 18% by 2005/06.

However, the aims of the kerbside project are in line with meeting the targets. The inspectors' report said: “The anticipated performance from the kerbside recycling scheme exceeds the statutory target by some way (25 per cent as opposed to 18 per cent), starting from a low base this is quite a challenging target.”

Inspectors recommended improving the borough's recycling sites to make the consistently well laid-out with good signposting.

The Audit Commission report also took Oswestry to task for their high waste collection costs, but praised the council's involvement in a partnership with other Shropshire authorities.

Oswestry is a member of the Shropshire waste partnership along with five other district councils and the county council. The partnership aims to put in place a unified waste management contract by 2006 to cover collection, disposal, recycling and waste minimisation elements.