Fury as council charges residents £5 to take away garden waste

At present Kirklees Council has a free garden waste collection but is proposing this is scrapped and a charge introduced to help it save £80m by 2014 because of cuts to Government funding.

If the move is agreed people will be charged £1 a bin bag, but with a minimum collection charge of £5 per visit, with payment required in advance.

The authority has also proposed those moving into newly-built homes should pay £25 to have their grey and green wheeled bins and others delivered – but they will remain the council’s property.

Last night Noreen Logan, of the Huddersfield and District Pensioners’ Organisation, said: “This is ludicrous.

“The very people that are going to be hit hard are the disabled and the elderly – a lot of people don’t have cars to take waste to the tip.”

She said the move also penalised those who were trying to keep their gardens tidy.

Kirklees Council insisted people would still be able to take garden waste free of charge to its household waste recycling sites. Members of the council’s Labour cabinet will meet next week to decide whether to back the plans which would bring in charges from October, save more than £250,000, and see four staff redeployed.

Coun Kath Pinnock, the leader of the Liberal Democrat group, and Coun David Hall, deputy leader of the Tories, both stressed the need to make difficult decisions to preserve other services.

A council spokesman said the changes would not impact on other waste collections and said the authority promoted home composting for garden waste.

“Only around 12 per cent of households in Kirklees used the free service last year,” they added. “We believe that the people who generate the garden waste should pay for it to be collected, rather than this service being subsidised by every household across Kirklees.”