Calls were made to reduce the £40 charge or scrap it all togetherResidents WILL have to pay £40 for their green bin to be collected despite attempts to reduce or get rid of the planned charge completely.
Cabinet members at Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council voted in favour of ending the free green waste collection service and bringing in the charge from February 1 next year.
It means that householders who want to have their green bin collected will have to pay £40 per year.
But an attempt was made to half the proposed charge to £20 by Green party councillor Keith Kondakor, who accused the Town Hall of ‘destroying’ demand for the service by bringing in such a high charge, especially considering neighbouring Hinckley and Bosworth Borough Council charges its residents £24 for the same service.
Councillor Jill Sheppard, cabinet member responsible for recycling in the borough, quoted BBC figures that average yearly charge for councils across the country is £42.40 a year.
“Instead of introducing the charge, the borough council could choose to cease the service completely however this would take a well-used, long standing service away from residents, giving no customer choice whatsoever,” she said.
While introducing the charge will not be popular it gives residents the choice if they wish to continue to receive the service.
"We are in this position because of the government’s austerity and the local authority’s austerity is not ending this year or next year.”
Charge is 'too high'
But Cllr Kondakor said the £40 was too high: “ “We are a poor borough in comparison to a lot of shire councils, we had this figure of £42 mentioned for the average of the country, these are shire counties usually in large affluent and rural areas, for Nuneaton and Bedworth, we need to be looking at a lower charge as possible.”
“We are talking about how many people will use the service, the officers reckon that 13,000 will use the service at £40, clearly a cheaper service, looking at £20 per bin, we would be looking at considerably more people still being able to use the service
“If you look at Hinckley, 60 per cent still use the service at £20 so it is massive loss to go right to the top of the scale and if you look at the income, £20 would raise us £450,000 in income. £40 raises us £500,000, going for such a high charge you are basically destroying demand for the service.
"Going in at the very bottom, £20, we would be the cheapest garden waste collection in the country, just slightly and it would still be a service that 62 per cent of people would use.
"It is far better to come in low, have a service that us used by two thirds of the population rather than a third and actually not have as much catastrophic impact on people bring the waste, there are all sorts of problems you will have due to his charge, having the lowest charge we can get away with, the better.
“I would like our service to be used by as many people as possible, which is why I want this charge if it has to be introduced to be as low as possible because that would have the best environmental outcome.”