Cheshire East residents will be charged for garden waste collection after the budget was approved, writes Belinda Ryan.
But some councillors fear this could prove costly for the environment and the council.
No details have been given as to when charging will start, although it is unlikely to be any time soon as further public consultation has to be undertaken.
And there is no information about how much residents will be charged, or what will happen to the garden waste bins of residents who don’t wish to pay.
Questions have also been raised about the impact on the green and food waste composting plant at Leighton Grange, which deals with all that waste from across Cheshire East.
Liberal Democrat group leader Phil Williams (Alsager) said at Wednesday’s Cheshire East budget meeting: “When Congleton Borough Council introduced a £15 charge for the removal of garden waste, only around a third of households actually used the scheme.
“Will the take-up be any higher two decades on?”
Congleton councillors David Brown and Sally Holland feared this was an unfair burden on their residents, who had recently seen the closure of their household waste and recycling centre.
Cllr Brown (Con) said: “What we will have is people, particularly those in Congleton, travelling to waste disposal sites, which is a 28 mile round trip, actually damaging the carbon footprint.”
He asked what was going to happen to the food waste composting site.
Cllr Holland (Con) said: “I wonder whether the Labour/Independent administration has any ideas what will happen to all of the existing brown and green bins that will no longer be required, and whether those residents, particularly in newer developments, will be refunded on their investments, with many new developments being required to pay for their bins before taking occupation?”
Conservative group leader Janet Clowes (Wynbunbury) said: “The cost of potential additional tonnage to incineration and landfill when people put their food waste or, indeed their green waste, in their black bins needs to be considered.”
But Cllr Susie Akers Smith (Congleton, Ind) took a difference view, saying the council needed to find millions of pounds of savings ‘due to the increase in inflation and due to lack of funding from the Conservative government’.
“One of the proposals I fully support is the introduction of a green bin charge.
“Many of our neighbouring councils already charge for a green bin collection, so at least we have this opportunity to raise the revenue needed to help balance this budget,” she said.
“Many households don’t compost at the moment. I’d like to think that charging for what has been a free service will encourage residents to compost.
“Not only is it the best fertiliser for your garden, as well as helping to save our planet, composting is an easy way to reduce the need for a green bin at all.”
Council leader Sam Corcoran told the meeting he had mixed views on the charge.
“I recognise that some people don’t have gardens and therefore why should they pay through council tax for a service they can’t use?” he said, adding that Cheshire East was in a minority of councils not already charging.
“For me the critical argument is financial.
“I will keep looking for alternative ways to raise money, but unless we can find £4m [proposed saving] elsewhere then, regretfully, we need to go ahead with this proposal.”
Having had a good policy to stop the dumping of food waste into land fill by allowing tax payers to put it into green waste bins they now want to charge the tax payer an additional £56.00 to basically reverse the process and encourage further fly tipping of garden waste so much for Cheshire East Green environmental policy just another money making exercise to pump up the public sector pension pot.
Cost the tax payer more than £56.00 to clear up the fly tipping caused by this backward thinking brain dead idea.
Do one, not paying will dump it on the roundabout if it won’t fit in the black bin
Criminals all of them not thought to &@£! All
I will just go back to burning it much to my neighbors annoyance
Agreed Graham. I live in a new build in shavington and we were given a 1991 valuation of 95k making us a band E (2.5k a year in council tax). There is no way my house would have sold for that in 1991. My parents 5 bed house was bought for 87k in 1990!! So they are profiting on new builds being in higher brackets (they have ignored us for 4 years when we questioned it). Also we pay £450 a year to LSH property services for the maintenance of the new build estate. Grass mowing, street lights, roads etc. So where is my share of 2.5k that should be spent on maintenance going as we pay additionally for that??? Finally I had to buy my bins. Even though I moved from another house in shavington I had to pay £38 per bin. So where did that money go and are CEC going to give me a refund now my garden bin has been “miss sold to me”?
Better idea, collect all the monies owed from people who are in arrears with their council tax…that will cover the £4 million shortfall. Totally disagree with the proposed extra payment for collection of garden waste. So with the 5% being added to our council tax, if we pay this garden waste charge, can we knock off that amount from our Council Tax, as surely garden waste collection is included? How much did the little green compost bins cost Cheshire East Council to purchase and give out to all households. I never use mine, I put my compost waste into my garden waste bin. Backward at coming forward Council.
small minded idea, so now more cars on the road full of weeds to dump either in the countryside or council tips, adds to the carbon footprint, 5% increase in council tax should really cover it, £15 per household isn’t a lot, but a lot of folk cannot justify that so will just add it secretly to the household rubbish, then sending out lorries and crew covering less work will lead to job losses, daft idea really
Given that Cheshire East has approved hundreds (thousands?) of new homes to be built, all paying significant sums in council tax into their coffers, where are the millions of pounds raised being spent from this new rich source of revenue? Surely this would cover the costs of garden waste collection and processing in addition to much else.