Public to be asked first before monthly bins introduced

By Elgan Hearn, Local Democracy Reporter

Any proposal to move black bin waste collections in the Welshpool area to a four-week monthly cycle will be subject to a public consultation first – a senior councillor has assured.

At a meeting of Powys County Council’s Liberal Democrat/ Labour Cabinet on Tuesday, senior councillors received the draft five-year plan to deal with waste and recycling up to 2030, that the council have dubbed the “sustainable resource strategy”.

A three-month public engagement process on the strategy took place from January to April which allowed residents to have their say on how waste and recycling will be run in the county for the next five years – but less than 200 people gave their views.

The report also included an analysis of black bin “residual” waste from 2022.

This showed that 45% of the waste residents put into the black bin could be recycled and that much of the strategy is based on getting residents to put that waste into recycling.

Part of the strategy discussed moving from three-week to a four-weekly black bin collection in a bid to persuade people to recycle more of this 45%.

Deputy Council Leader, Cllr Matthew Dorrance (Labour), said: “The report makes clear that one of the key things we need to do here is reduce waste going into residual (black bin) and increase our recycling.

“We all know that needs to happen but nonetheless it presents a significant challenge. There’s been much talk in the local media and residents contacting me about the change to kerbside residual (black bin) waste collections.”

Cllr Dorrance asked: “Just to clarify, this paper does not advocate that at this stage, any future consideration will be open to full engagement.”

Cabinet Member for Highways, Transport and Recycling, Cllr Jackie Charlton (Liberal Democrat), said: “You are quite right, any future changes we make will be open to full consultation.”

Cllr Charlton had “noted the headlines” and added that only “one line” in the strategy document had mentioned black bin collections.

She believed the publicity around the issue meant that people will have read the rest of the report and all the “other positive elements as well”.

Council Leader, Cllr Jake Berriman, added: “It is a really exciting paper and I’m really pleased we can all get behind it.”

Cabinet then went ahead and unanimously agreed the strategy.

The strategy is an important document for the council as it could help form the basis of future business cases for Welsh Government funding to make sure that it’s waste and recycling facilities are “up to spec” for the future and able to handle more recycling.

The changes are also supposed to help the council hit and surpass the 70% Welsh Government recycling target.