Council to buy 12,000 bins due to surge in demand

The garden waste scheme has proved significantly more popular than anticipated

A council has agreed to urgently buy 12,000 more bins to ensure its new garden waste scheme can be rolled out.

At least 19,000 people have signed up to Middlesbrough Council's service - more than twice as many as the 9,000 estimated.

It means the council must now spend an additional £376,000 to ensure the scheme can meet current and future demand.

Ahead of an urgent meeting of its executive, a spokesman said the Labour-led authority was confident it could fulfil outstanding orders "in the very near future".

On April 1, the council launched the subscription service, which sees residents pay £40 a year to have their garden waste removed.

A number of subscribers are yet to receive their new brown bins and are therefore "at risk of missing numerous garden waste collections when they have paid for the service", according to a report from the council's director of environment and community services.

The executive decided to approve the £376,000 spend at a meeting on Wednesday afternoon.

A director's report suggested ordering thousands more bins was the only viable option to keep the scheme on track.

It stated: "The council would not be able to fulfil the orders of all residents who have signed up to the subscription service, would not be able to enable any additional residents to sign up for the service from this point forward or enable any future subscriptions at a later date."

'Surpassing expectations'

The council initially ordered 14,000 bins, against a projected take-up of about 9,000.

Projections were reportedly based on first-year take-up at other councils in the North East which had recently introduced charges.

But demand for the subscription scheme "vastly surpassed expectations", with more than 19,000 households signing up.

On Wednesday morning, a spokesman said the council was delivering hundreds of brown bins a day and removing old green bins at the same time.

He added: "We will also add extra collections next March."

A specific issue affecting 1,300 orders is reportedly in the process of being rectified.