BOSSES at Malvern Hills District Council are set to rule out plans of using a private company to collect rubbish and recycling from homes across the area.
The district council had been exploring the possibility of creating a joint waste collection service with Wychavon District Council and this would have potentially been provided by a private company with the hope of saving hundreds of thousands of pounds.
There had been interest from eight companies with three shortlisted for further development and negotiation towards the end of last year.
However, rather than save money, the project has revealed it would cost considerably more to outsource the service than to operate it in-house.
As a result it is being recommended to councillors the idea of a joint waste contract should not be pursued.
But the district council still needs to find £250,000 worth of savings from its waste and recycling collection service in order to plug a £1.8million gap in its budget by 2019/20 due to government funding cuts.
Council officers have drawn up a series of proposals to save the money, the main one being switching to alternate weekly collections where rubbish is collected one week and recycling the next week on a rotating basis.
Coun Bronwen Behan, portfolio holder for environment on Malvern Hills District Council, said: “What the exercise on the joint waste contract has shown is that this council already operates a very efficient and cost-effective waste collection service that the private sector is unable to match and our staff should be congratulated on that.
“As councillors we are now faced with a very difficult decision.
“Do we make a small adjustment to the way we collect waste and recycling in order to balance the books or do we make significant cuts to all our services in order to maintain weekly collections?
“We’ve made no decision about that yet and we’ll take the time we have to study all the options and implications before agreeing a way forward.”
The proposals to switch to alternate weekly collections would save about £150,000 and would see residents issued with black wheeled bins instead of sacks, unless it would be unsuitable to do so due to type or location of a property.
It will also boost the district’s recycling rates which is currently around 38 per cent and would reduce the amount of waste sent to landfill sites.
Alternate collections already operate in other parts of Worcestershire and each area saw recycling rates rise following the introduction of the system.
District councillors will discuss the proposal for the first time at a meeting of the overview and scrutiny committee on Tuesday, February 7.
It will then go to the decision-making executive committee a week later before being presented to the council for a final decision on Tuesday, February 21.
If the proposal is rejected then it will mean officers have to draw up plans for significant cuts to other council services or major increases in charges to balance the books.
If approved the change would be made from April 2018.
