£25 charge for green bin collection starts next spring – Council says it was “left with no choice” due to budget cuts

Households across the county borough are being reminded that they will have to pay to have their green bins collected from next spring.

Wrexham Council say the decision to introduce a £25 fee per year wasn’t “taken lightly”, but due to ongoing cuts to local government and attempts to generate revenue, the local authority was left with “no choice but to join other councils in charging for this discretionary service.”

Currently there is no charge to have one green bin collected. However this will change in April 2020.

Those who already pay to have any additional green bins emptied, will also be charged £25 to continue having those collected.

If you no longer want a green bin, you can go online to MyAccount and either login or sign up to ask for it to be taken away. However if you change your mind and wish to pay to have a green bin emptied you will have to buy a new bin if you’ve already sent yours back.

Households who want to keep their green bin, but don’t want to pay to use it, won’t have it collected.

In July 2019 we asked Cllr David A Bithell, lead member for environment and transport, how the local authority would check if a household had paid to have its bin collected.

Speaking at the time Cllr Bithell explained that the council are looking at technology that will allow refuse collectors to check if a resident has paid for their green bin when they arrive for the collection.

Another option would be to send stickers out – similar to the ones for the second green bins – once people have paid.

Details released by Wrexham Council today also state that systems are being set up to enable to payments.

The statement from the local authority, continues onto say: “There are alternatives to using a green bin. You can home compost or use one of our three Household Recycling Centres. You can find details of these here.

“We hope you will continue to have your green bin emptied by us as we want to see Wrexham’s recycling rates continue to increase year on year, but times are really hard and we understand if you don’t wish to pay for this service.”

Cllr Bithell said the difficult decision was made in order to continue delivering the service and to “protect other key frontline services”.

He continued: “Residents have been hugely supportive of our recycling drives since 2003 and we know this may seem like a backward step. Charges for green bins were not something we wished to introduce and this council’s commitment was to introduce the lowest possible charge we could at £25 per green bin, which is one of the lowest in England and Wales.

“Introducing a charge for green waste is in line with the Welsh Govenment’s Blue Print on Waste and the last few years our environmental grant which supports recycling initiatives has continued to be reduced year on year, although our 70% target remains.

“The council are committed to recycling and reducing waste and residents can continue to use one of our three HRC sites free of charge where we also supply free compost and this will continue into the future.”

The new charges were introduced as part of a package of budget cuts that were backed unanimously by executive board members in July.

A series of other T2 (Tier 2) proposals will also go out for further consultation and a decision will be made after the draft local government settlement is announced at the end of the year.

These amount to savings of £913k for 2020/21 and £140k for 2021/22.