Today is the day that the decision on charged-for garden waste collections will be made by the Fenland District Council Cabinet. The report prepared for the meeting recommends the scheme for APPROVAL, and I think it is now very unlikely that we will see the scheme abandoned. This is really unfortunate. The scheme disproportionately targets the worst-off and the vulnerable. The council expects the biggest sign-up group to be those over the age of 65. The scheme is bad for the environment. Peterborough Council saw their landfill waste shoot up by 1,500 tonnes during the five months after they launched a similar scheme, causing an additional cost of £118,000 over just five months. The scheme is bad for people's pockets. It amounts to a 16% increase on Fenland's portion of the council tax on a Band D property. Yesterday morning I was interviewed about the brown bins on BBC Radio Cambridgeshire. You can find the interview on the BBC Radio iPlayer (01:06:30 for the start of the piece): http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p049jt0h It's also worth knowing that during the Cabinet meeting our petition has its own agenda item. I doubt that the council will suddenly start listening to residents, but the radio interview and the petition mean that it's hard to ignore the resentment towards these proposals. The council is backing-up its decision with a consultation that was seriously flawed. They received 10,482 responses from people over the age of 45 and just 1,809 responses from people under the age of 45. I don't have a demographics breakdown for the petition, but I strongly suspect it represents the under-45 age group far better than the consultation does. The report going before councillors tells us some new information about the scheme: - The free garden waste collections will finish at the end of March, with paid-for collections starting in April. - People opting-out of the scheme who no longer want their unused brown bin won't have it collected until the summer of next year. - The charge is set at £40 per year. - There will be a 10% discount for people who sign-up before January 10th, but this will only apply to the first year. - There will be an option to pay by direct debit in three instalments, however you won't get your bin collected until you've made all three payments and won't receive the 10% discount. - The scheme will only pay for itself if between 40% and 50% of households pay for collections. Otherwise, it will make a loss. - After the first year those opted-in may see the cost of collections increase if demand is low. - The council expects to spend £75,000 on initial set-up costs. - 20% of residents will have a their garden waste collected on a different day to their other recycling bins. - The council expects the scheme to lower recycling rates by over 5%. Regardless of what happens at the council meeting later, rest-assured that I will be scrutinising this charge wherever possible once it's been implemented to ensure that it delivers value for money for both users and taxpayers. Best wishes, Lawrence