Powys council's sliding recycling figures puts them in danger of a government fine for not hitting target 

Powys County Council is in danger of being fined by the Welsh Government unless recycling figures pick up.

At a meeting of the council’s Economy, Residents and Communities Scrutiny Committee on Wednesday, October 14, councillors went through a performance report that looked at how services had been delivered against a number of targets.

These targets are contained in the Corporate and Strategic Equality Plan 2023-2027 update report for quarter one of 2026/2027, which covers April to the end of June.

In 2024/2025, the Welsh Government’s legal recycling target of 70 per cent came into force, with a fine of £200 to be levied on councils for every tonne they fall short of the 70 per cent threshold.

In 2024/2025, Powys was one of 12 out of 22 local authorities in Wales that hit the target, but data from earlier this year shows that the council’s recycling performance has dramatically fallen away.

Measure 348 in the report is on recycling and shows that the figure during that quarter had fallen to 65.7 per cent against a target of 70 per cent.

Committee chairwoman Councillor Angela Davies (Liberal Democrat – Rhayader) asked: “Why is the recycling performance below target?”

Councillor Pete Lewington (Conservative – Newtown West) stressed: “We get a fine if we don’t hit the target and I think it’s quite a hefty one, what are we doing to put it right?”

Cabinet member for legal and regulatory services Councillor Richard Church (Liberal Democrat – Welshpool Castle) said: “The reasons relate partly to a reclassification of some of the materials and definitions.”

He added that the garden waste collection figures had dropped due to the extended dry period of the summer.

Cllr Church believed that the fine was “not automatic” but a possibility, depending on the reasons given for missing the target.

Information and systems manager Curtis Ross said: “We are starting to see an improvement in quarter two.”

Mr Ross explained that issues had been identified with the council’s collection of “gully waste”, collected by highways teams, being included in the figures.

This is mostly dependent on whether the Welsh Government provides funding to pay for the “gully” waste collection service on trunk roads.

Mr Ross said: “To the end of September there was a 20 per cent reduction in collection, in winter we may see a glut of funding and more activity by the highways team to bridge that gap.”

“Wood waste for a long time we were being assured by the sector that recycles it that our recovery was 89/90 per cent plus.”

But this has changed, as Natural Resources Wales (NRW), the Welsh Government’s environmental body, now verifies the figures.

Mr Ross said: “They queried whether that was possible, but it was a Wales-wide issue.

“NRW have done a big piece of work towards the end of the last financial year and determined the figures being quoted were not feasible, looking at all the site returns for the processing facilities it goes to, which includes English facilities and authorities.”

Mr Ross continued: “We reported these figures in good faith, NRW are now prescribing figures for us to use and from 90 per cent last year we’ve dropped down to 23 per cent, which is a huge deficit.”

He explained that this contributed to an overall drop of two per cent in the recycling figures, and the quarter one figures would have been 67.7 per cent without this change.

“A lot of material impacts are outside our control,” said Mr Ross.

To help improve recycling rates, he said that the waste awareness enforcement team had been “doubled” and there would be a campaign soon to improve food waste recycling.

Recommendations and comments from the committee will be provided to cabinet.