Call for axing of green waste fee to be debated

The petition will be debated at a meeting of Shropshire Council at Shirehall

A petition calling for new green waste charges to be withdrawn will be debated on Thursday, after hundreds of people complained about the fee.

It comes after Shropshire Council started accepting registrations this month for its £56-a-year subscription service, after previously providing the service for free.

The petition backed by 1,840 people calls on the authority to "significantly reduce" the charge and scrap a proposed booking system for household recycling centres.

However, the council said its charge was in line with other authorities and explained the booking initiative would help it prevent illegal trade waste being dumped at recycling centres.

The authority began accepting the registration payments, after deciding in July it could no longer afford to offer the service for nothing, since it is trying to save £62.5m from its budget this financial year.

The petition calling for it to think again will be debated at a full council meeting at Shirehall, having reached the 1,000-signature threshold needed to force a debate.

Prohibitive to many

A consultation on proposals drew more than 18,000 responses from residents earlier this year before the authority decided to press ahead with a scheme.

The petition said the council appeared to have made decisions "without regard to public opinion" and the £56 cost would be prohibitive to many and result in "less recycling and increased fly tipping, costing more to clean it up".

It stated there would be an unnecessary cost to set up a booking system, which "discriminates against those who don’t have digital access".

"If people can’t dispose of their waste when they need to, again there will be less recycling and more fly tipping," the petition adds.

The council has said that although collecting garden waste was not a service it must by provide by law, it remained one it wanted "to continue to provide".

Announcing the changes earlier this year, it stated the booking system would also reduce the amount of waste brought in from outside the county.

This news was gathered by the Local Democracy Reporting Service which covers councils and other public service organisations.