'It makes me really sad that we’re in this position' - Weekly food waste collections may not happen in Shropshire until 2039

Shropshire may not be able to carry out weekly food collections until 2039 – which one councillor has called appalling.

All waste collection authorities, including Shropshire Council, were required to provide weekly food waste collections from households from the beginning of this month.

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This was on the back of the Simpler Recycling Legislation that came into effect last year which aims to standardise recycling across England.

However, it has been reported that at least 57 councils have missed the deadline.

Shropshire is one of them, with the authority saying it hasn’t got the finances to deliver the service.

While the Government has provided funding to cover the purchase of vehicles and food waste bins, along with some short term transitional funding for delivery, communications and project management (totalling just over £3.6 million), Shropshire Council say its most recent financial settlement did not include ongoing revenue funding to run a weekly food waste collection service.

Therefore, the authority says that, by introducing the service, it would place a significant financial risk at a time when it is already facing unprecedented pressure.

On Wednesday (April 15), Cabinet noted a report stating the council’s position.

It explained that the current Private Finance Initiative (PFI) contract with Veolia “is complex” and negotiation of the current arrangements are required.

The council say it will apply for a retrospective transition in accordance with the Environment Act to safeguard the authority if it cannot resolve the budget gap and/or capacity issue.

This would allow the council to delay the implementation of a weekly food waste service until the existing contract ends in 2039.

However, Councillor Duncan Kerr (Greens, Oswestry South) said that “is an appalling answer”.

“I clearly would be very aghast that our residents have to wait 13 years for something other residents in the country are expecting and the Government has legislated for,” said Councillor Kerr.

“I’m thinking of proposing a minute’s silence that we can’t, as a society, get to a place where we can collect food waste in Shropshire.

“It’s a very sad place for Shropshire to be, and for our communities to be. I think we need to reflect on that for a few minutes.

“I’ve never seen a report to this council, or indeed to any other council, that says the council is not going to comply with it at all.

“The law requires us to have this service. That is a very poor precedent for the council to be in. I understand it’s an inheritance for yourselves as a controlling group, and we’ve got under-resourcing from a Labour government.

“And we’ve had a situation where the previous Conservative administration didn’t prioritise this and didn’t to the extent of seeking an exemption.

“They seemed to just walk away from the issue. And in that time, we’ve lost an awful lot of time when we could have been sitting down with the contractor and work out a practical solution to do something that our public actually want to see.

“I am disappointed to see that we still haven’t got the full costs. The report suggests some provisional costs, but I would have hoped by this stage – a year on – we would have actually have worked out what the full costs are.

“It doesn’t help us when campaigning to the Government and other agencies when we haven’t actually nailed exactly what the costs are. It sort of looks like we haven’t done our due diligence.”

Councillor Rosemary Dartnall (Labour, Column & Sutton) called it a “shocking situation to be in.”

“Up until September 2024, we were collecting food waste as part of the green waste system – 97,000 out of 140,000 homes. It’s a massively short-term decision that we’ve made.

“We’ve chosen to go for green waste charging which meant we had to stop that [collecting food waste] in order to keep it legal.”

Laura Tyler, service director for commissioning, said that deferring it to 2039 “is a backstop position” so it gives the council time to work through the transition period be able to provide a weekly collection.

“We are very unique to other local authorities in the sense we have a very complex PFI contract that we’ve got to negotiate, and we have a huge rurality as a county which means it costs more to deliver these services,” she said.

“We are committed to get this in place and will be working at pace to look at how we can ensure we can do that.”

Ms Tyler explained that in 2015, a variation was made in the contract which said that, subject to the development of an In Vessel Composter (IVC), a fortnightly collection would exclude Oswestry and Bridgnorth.

“At which point, we said we can’t do that,” she said.

“Hence why we’re coming to say that we need to continue to have those conversations with the contractor and we need to look at how we model this to ensure we’ve got consistent practice for all residents across the county.”

Councillor Heather Kidd, leader of Shropshire Council, said “there are all sorts of things around the contract which has made this difficult”, adding “it’s a real mess.”

She said: “We really want to collect food waste. But given our financial situation and the lack of collection revenue, we are forced to be where we are. It makes me really sad that we’re in this position.”