BROMSGROVE District Council working on introducing household food waste collections in line with new legislation which comes into force this month.
Originally Bromsgrove District and Redditch Borough councils were working on a joint plan with Wyre Forest District Council to keep costs down but that did not materialise.
A spokesperson for Bromsgrove and Redditch Councils said: “Unfortunately, Wyre Forest withdrew from that process in January after raising concerns about Government funding.
“While we understand that decision, it meant Bromsgrove District and Redditch Borough Councils needed to go back to the drawing board and develop revised plans to deliver the service together in an affordable and sustainable way.”
They added both authorities were committed to introducing food waste collections, adding it built on the commercial food waste collections the councils already provided.
“The collection vehicles were already ordered and more work will now be needed to put all the practical arrangements in place, including recruiting staff and expanding depot capacity.
“Because these are major decisions, this must be considered and approved by elected councillors later this year.”
The councils added a further update was due in the summer with a view to starting a phased ‘area-by-area’ roll-out later this year, subject to those final decisions.
“Once the plans are finalised, including any start dates, we’ll update residents directly.
“There will be lots of information before the service begins.”
Research by Birmingham waste management experts at Divert has predicted how much food waste each authority in the West Midlands would collect.
It forecasts Bromsgrove would collect 7,106.82tonnes of food waste every year and Redditch’s will be 6,157.34tonnes. This has the potential to power 790 homes each year in Bromsgrove district and 684 in Redditch borough each year.
The authority expected to collect the most food waste annually is Birmingham City Council with 82,956.58tonnes predicted by Divert – that would power 9,217 homes.
With regard to the original north Worcestershire food waste plan, a Wyre Forest District Council spokesperson said: “The current situation is that we will not be introducing until the Government provides additional funding to cover the cost of the new burden.”
