Split vote for Shropshire councillors over weekly food waste collection saga
A committee has failed to reach a recommendation that it will send to Cabinet regarding Shropshire Council’s claim that it is unlikely to meet its April target to provide weekly food waste collections.
The Simpler Recycling Legislation, which came into effect in March 2025, includes the requirement that all households have a weekly food waste collection from March 31 this year.
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However, Shropshire Council has said it is unlikely to meet the target, due to uncertainty over the funding required to deliver the service and the increased lead time for the new lorries and bins needed.
The council’s economy and environment overview and scrutiny meeting discussed the issue at a meeting on Thursday (January 29).
Members were asked to consider the following options that it would recommend to Cabinet:
Do nothing.
Introduce a fortnightly collection of food waste to all households through a 23-litre food waste bin, collected in the existing garden waste vehicles.
Introduce a weekly collection of food waste collection to all households, as follows: In week one, food waste would be collected in the garden waste vehicles, and in week two, food waste would be collected in separate food waste-only vehicles, and this would repeat.
However, after discussing it for an hour-and-a-half, there was a split vote.
Councillor Sharon Ritchie-Simmons’ proposal was that, despite the committee wanting to go for option three, it should go for the first one, “to do nothing”. This is so that the council can go back to the Government to see if it can provide the funding.
Meanwhile, Councillor Sam Walmsley’s recommendation was that members should go with option two.
However, with four councillors going for the first proposal and four for the second, there was not a majority decision. What the council decides to do is set to be made at a Cabinet meeting on March 11 – just three weeks before the statutory requirement to provide a weekly food waste collection service comes into effect.
This week’s meeting heard that, if the council introduced a weekly food waste collection service, it would cost £3.8 million. This is because it would require an extra 52 members of staff and 20 vehicles.
A report said that, since 2023, officers have raised concerns to the Department of Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) about the amount of revenue funding that would be available to operate the service.
According to Shropshire Council, all indications are that money would be available through “new burdens” funding. This is where central government would fully fund any new duties or initiatives places on local authorities, preventing unfended mandates that would raise council tax.
However, although capital new burdens funding has been provided for the purchase of vehicles and bins, the council says there has not been an opportunity to allocate the required revenue budget as part of its Medium-Term Financial Strategy. According to the council, the provisional Local Government Settlement has actually resulted in a loss of funding of £13.3m, and “it is therefore difficult to see how nay new burdens money has been provided”, with no money ringfenced for a weekly food waste collection.
The council has already stated its concerns regarding its settlement as part of a formal consultation response. It has also applied for an “exceptional financial support” totalling around £200m, which would see it through to March 2027.
