COVENTRY MESSAGE BOARD

Calls were made to reduce the £40 charge or scrap it all together



Residents 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.”

Coventry has taken over Nuneaton's recycling collections



Coventry city council has officially taken over the brown bin recycling service across Nuneaton and Bedworth.

A seven-year deal brokered between the city council and Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council officially got underway this month.

Borough council binmen will continue to collect green lidded bins but Coventry will collect the brown lidded recycling bins.

The full cost of the contract has never been revealed by the Town Hall but what is known is that it is more than the previous deal by almost £800,000.

It has been stressed that residents should not notice a change in the service according to councillor Jill Sheppard, cabinet member responsible for bins at the Town Hall.

She added that she hopes that the new partnership will allow even more recyclable waste to be collected across the borough.

“Last year, our borough’s residents recycled just under 10,000 tonnes and with the new robust partnerships in place, we look forward to seeing this increase further over the coming years,” Cllr Sheppard said.

“I would like to thank residents for their continued recycling.”

Green bin election pledge called into question

A pledge by Labour members they would not introduce a charge for garden waste collections in Nuneaton has been challenged.

During local election campaigns in May, leaflets were sent to residents promising green bin charges would not be introduced.

Seven months later the council has announced that it will cost householders £40 as of February next year if they want their green bins collected.

Opposition Tory councillors claimed at a meeting the authority began considering plans for charges in June, just a month after the election.

Cllr Kris Wilson, leader of the Conservative group, said: “Apparently from the information I have been given, the controlling group have been working on this since June.

"Could they explain why they went to election with literature saying ‘we will not charge’ and then straight after being put back in power in June, begin the wheels in motion to actually charge residents for their green bin waste.

"Basically misleading, some may say lying to the public.”

Cllr Keith Kondakor questioned why the council is insistent on the £40 charge when neighbouring authorities are charging almost half of that.

“People understand why we have to make a charge but they are absolutely livid that the charge is £40 for collection when the actual cost of colllection is £20,” Cllr Kondakor said.

“People want to know why this hasn’t been called in by the Tories but people also want to know is why aren’t we looking at a lower charge, and why aren’t we looking at ‘pay as you go’ as a lot of people only put their green waste bin out once or twice a year. £40 a year is a really retrograde step. This borough earns £140 a week less than people in Rugby, and so. I ask why we haven’t considered a lower charge and pay as you go.”

Cllr Rob Tromans questioned why the council would not use some of its reserves to pay for the scheme until the start of the financial year, when the situation could be looked at properly.

“These are very drastic changes being made to services in year, there shouldn’t be any changes in year and, if something has changed, reserves should be used until there has been proper consultation with the public

“Rather than keep adopting this dirge policy of making these decisions quickly, why have they not, more prudently, used reserves if something untoward has all of a sudden come up during this budget?”

Apparent U-turn on green bin collections in Nuneaton and Bedworth

Council bosses have apparently made a U-turn on plans not to remove green bins from homes which ‘opt out’ of a controversial collection charge.

Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council says it WILL now take away unwanted green bins from homeowners who decide not to take part in the soon-to-be £40 charge for the green wheelie bin collection.

It has been decided that, after March next year, those that 'opt out' will be able to request for their unwanted garden and food bins to be taken away.

In a social media response to a resident, the council's customer services team said: “We have had an update from the waste management team that from March 2019 a process will be put into place to collected unwanted green bins.

"Once a process has been organised, we will communicate further.”

Coventry Live has contacted the borough council for an official comment but, at the time of publication, no one was available.

It is not clear where the unwanted bins will be stored but they are set to be cleaned and re-used again.

The news comes just hours after a petition was launched, demanding that the council change its mind over not collecting the unwanted green bins.

Call for council to cut green bin charge as income hits more than £250,000



Green bin costs should be cut as council bosses have revealed that an extra quarter of a million pound is set to be made from the levy.

Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council has said that more than 20,000 properties have signed-up for the £40 charge to use the green bin waste collection, bringing in an extra £250,000 of income per year for the service.

With this in mind, calls have been made for the £40 charge to be reduced.

Councillor Keith Kondakor led the calls at a cabinet meeting, saying: "A quarter of a million pound extra income from the green waste service - you are charging far more for the service than it costs to provide, I understand why you have to charge but you don't have to charge so much.

"Now the service has bedded in, I would ask you would reduce the charge by a small amount or introduce a pay as you go, for those who have a small usage and may only want it four times a year, you could get a sticker for ten pounds.

"It is either £40 or nothing at the moment. For affluent people with large gardens it is not a problem, for the less well off, with small gardens, it is a significant cost. I do ask that you look at a pay as you go scheme."

The increase in the amount of uptake for the green bin collection was revealed in a report to cabinet, which mapped out savings that have to be made for the books to be balanced for 2020/21.

Cllr Kyle Evans said: "There are some proposed savings in this report I do broadly support but I beg to ask why they were not included in the budget this year as we my have been able to reduce the green bin charge from £40 to say £35 if we had included some of these changes.

"We seriously do need to consider reducing the green bin charge from £40, when you go down some of the more rural areas, on Bedworth Lane and The Woodlands, it is really surprising to see how much green waste is being dumped in places. So I really do think we should look at reducing the green waste charge ahead of the budget setting in February."

Cost of council green bin charge in Nuneaton and Bedworth could change



The cost of the green bin charge in Nuneaton and Bedworth could be changed. Nuneaton and Bedworth Borough Council first introduced the charge for the previously free green bin collections back in 2018.

The current cost of the service is £40 a year. But a council report, set to be discussed at a cabinet meeting tomorrow night (October 9) has revealed that the charge is set to be reviewed.

Part of this, the report states, is down to the fact that it has not been looked at for six years. Another element is the fact that the Town Hall, like authorities up and down the country, has to bring in a free food waste collection by April next year.

This will mean that food waste will no longer be collected in the green bins. The cabinet report explains: "The garden and food waste collection service is a discretionary service that collects approximately 8,000 tonnes of compostable material a year from 24,888 households.

"Since 2018 the subscription has been set a £40 per bin and has remained unchanged since its introduction. There are no discounts."

It goes on to add: " The Environment Bill 2001 will require the Council, as a waste collection authority, to collect food waste through a separate weekly collection. This service has to be free and is detailed to commence from April 2026."

It concludes: "The council hasn’t reviewed the service since its introduction in 2018,operating unchanged since that time. Due to the new requirements which will require the council to collect food waste on a weekly basis for free, it is appropriate to review the whole service, as due to the upcoming changes food waste will no longer be able to be collected through the green bin."

Members of the council's cabinet are being asked to note that the subscription fee for the service will be reviewed as part of the council’s annual review of its fees and charges. They will meet at the Town Hall at 6pm tomorrow night (Wednesday, October 9).