The waste subject to fees includes kitchens and bathrooms, timber including flooring, fencing and decking, rubble, paving slabs and concrete and more. The charges will range from £3.20 to £26.50 per item.
A report that went before the council on 31 August said these items were “costly” to dispose of and, by not charging, the cost of was passed on to council taxpayers.
The council effectively declared bankruptcy last year, with £760 million of borrowed debt.
The report added that introducing charges would align with Buckinghamshire council’s policy, disincentivising the neighbouring county’s residents to dispose of their DIY waste in Slough free of charge.
Councillor Mohammed Nazir, Slough’s lead member for transport and the local environment, said: “These new charges bring Chalvey HWRC in line with our neighbours, charging only those minority of people who wish to dispose of these certain types of waste and relieving the burden from other taxpayers.”
Consultation
Slough’s move comes ahead of the publication of the government’s response to its consultation on DIY waste charges, which is expected “this autumn” (see letsrecycle.com story).
In April, the government set out plans to ban charging for DIY waste at HWRCs as part of efforts to crack down on fly-tipping (see letsrecycle.com story). It said there were more than 60,000 fly-tipping incidents involving construction, demolition, and excavation material in 2020/21, an increase of 18% from 2019/20.
However, the plans were met with concerns from local authorities and council groups, who said that the money from the charges was used to pay for disposal costs of this material (see letsrecycle.com story).
Fly-tipping
When asked about concerns that fly-tipping might increase as a result of the charges, a spokesperson for Slough borough council told letsrecycle.com: “We will be monitoring fly-tipping to see if there is any increase.
“However, other areas have not seen a particular increase and our neighbourhood enforcement officers are well versed in investigating fly-tips and prosecuting those who dump waste in our borough.
“We also do this in partnership with Bucks council as we have some cross-border fly-tipping.”
The spokesperson added that, in the event of government banning the charges, “of course we will comply with that”.
They said: “However, currently, the cost to the council of waste disposal, in particular items like this puts a burden on all our taxpayers and we wish that cost to be borne by those people who are disposing of this waste only.
“It also deters some traders from attempting to claim they are disposing of domestic DIY waste rather than using the weighbridge as they should.”
Slough’s report stated: “Slough currently experiences fly-tipping from time to time with the main sources being unscrupulous landlords with high churn of tenants in poor accommodation and unlicenced commercial traders – offenders are pursued by our regulation and enforcement teams.” It added that domestic residents do not tend to fly-tip.
Changes
The council has also agreed to reduce the frequency of general waste and recycling collections from weekly to fortnightly starting next June.
The report explained that this will save the local authority £700,000 per annum, as well as “increase our recycling rate from about 28% to 35-40%”.
It noted that food waste is to remain within general waste, “pending a review of options to separately collect food waste”.
Slough borough council carries out its waste and recycling collection in-house and is also in charge of the Chalvey HWRC. With an estimated population of 121,000, the local authority had a recycling rate of 26.5% in 2020/21.
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