Free bulky waste collection pledge gets go-ahead

Household rubbish was dumped in a rural lane at Crays Hill, near Basildon, Essex, in 2023

Free bulky waste collections will be offered to residents in a city in a bid to crack down on fly-tipping.

Southend-on-Sea City Council leader Daniel Cowan confirmed the plan would go ahead when a new waste contractor would take over from Veolia.

Items such as fridges, mattresses and furniture would be collected under the scheme, which was one of Labour's pledges before it won control of the city council in May.

Conservative group leader James Courtenay said he believed the plan was unaffordable when "we’re already facing being more than £8m overspent".

Southend-on-Sea City Council leader Daniel Cowan said the city's residents would be offered free collections

Lydia Hyde, councillor responsible for climate, environment and waste, said she believed the scheme would offer "longer term financial benefit to the council" because "fly tipping costs us more", as reported by the Local Democracy Reporting Service.

Under the current contract, Veolia keeps the revenue from both garden waste and bulky waste collections, but under the new terms the council will keep that revenue.

Ms Hyde said: “We’ve changed it so that any money that we collect from bulky waste collections is kept by the council and we made a pledge that it would be free and that’s what we’ve done."

The council plans to keep charging for green waste collection as "an income", she added.

Mr Courtenay said: “It’s a great election pledge to say we’re going to have free bulky waste collection but that’s going to come at a cost - where’s the money going to come from?

"If they were a couple of million in surplus and wanted to spend it I would have no problem, but they’ve got to make the budget balance.

"It may make Labour look good but the only people who will end up paying for it are Southend council tax payers.”

In November, the BBC reported nearly 20,000 fly-tipping incidents were reported in Essex in the previous year - but fewer than 5% led to fines or prosecutions.