Liverpool residents to get final free green bin collection

Councillor Abdul Qadir said the authority wanted to "apologise to everyone who put their green bin out this week"

Residents in Liverpool will get a final free garden waste collection before a paid-for scheme begins after the city's council made an error in publicising when the service would end.

The council said residents were "mistakenly informed" the free service would continue beyond 25 March.

As a result, a final free collection will take place before a charge of £40 a year begins on 18 April.

The new scheme has been criticised by opposition councillors.

After 18 April, only households which have paid the £40 charge, which was first proposed in October, will have their green bins emptied.

The council said the levy was put in place to ensure the coming year's budget balanced and more than 12,000 households had opted to pay the fee.

It is estimated about 35,000 homes will need to subscribe in the first year to make the £1.7m operation cost neutral.

'Doomed to fail'

Councillor Abdul Qadir, the Labour-led authority's cabinet member for neighbourhoods, said the council wanted to "apologise to everyone who put their green bin out this week".

He said the mistake in communication was down to "a computer error... which we have now fixed [but] accept it should not have happened".

Mr Qadir said the council understood the levy had "not been universally popular", but anyone "struggling financially" should investigate the "Liverpool Citizen Support Scheme and the help we provide there".

He also urged people with smaller gardens to consider composting, which was "an environmentally-friendly way to create rich soil... for free" and was "relatively easy to set up".

On Thursday, Liberal Democrat councillor Richard Clein said the scheme was "doomed to fail" as not enough people had signed up for it, while the leader of the council's Green councillors Tom Crone said it was a "bad policy" which would lead to less waste being recycled.

In neighbouring Wirral the council has announced a 15% rise in the levy it charges for garden waste collections, the Local Democracy Reporting Service said.

Wirral Council said due to the rising costs of providing the service, residents will now have to pay £50, up from £43, with those wanting a second bin paying a further £30, up from £25.

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