Council approves £30 garden waste collection fee

North Tyneside Council is introducing the scheme from March

A new £30 fee for garden waste collections has been approved by councillors in North Tyneside.

The authority's cabinet signed off the charge for brown bins - one of the measures in its budget designed to plug a £19m deficit.

According to the Labour-led council, about £660,000 would be generated from the annual fee, across a predicted 22,000 households that would take up the new terms.

The local authority said it would send letters to residents, who can subscribe to the service by November, with collections beginning in March.

Residents have the choice to opt-in for the newly charged garden waste service, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

'Value for money'

The Labour-elected mayor of North Tyneside, Dame Norma Redfearn, said "tough choices" had to be made, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

"This government actually made this council, and other councils, over £140m worse off," she said.

"It’s just common sense that when you remove that amount of money you can’t do everything you want to do."

The Conservative Party said it wanted to ensure councils provide "high quality and value for money services".

Among the measures in its manifesto, it said it would ban the four-day working week in local authorities, make council performance "more transparent" and protect residents from "excessive council tax rises".

Previous attempt

North Tyneside Council had previously attempted to introduce a £20 collection fee for brown bins in 2013.

But a pilot scheme launched a year earlier was scrapped after 30,000 households declined to pay.

The council refunded over 19,000 who had paid for the collection by January 2013.

North Tyneside said its charge was the lowest across the seven North East local authorities.

Residents can also deposit garden waste for free at the household waste and recycling centre in North Shields.