The first of Liverpool City Council’s paid-for green bin collections start today.
Residents living in Liverpool who signed up before the cut off date of April 8 will see their green bins collected fortnightly under the new scheme. The new annual £40 charge for collections has been introduced as the council looks to make up the shortfall of its latest round of budget cuts.
It is hoped that the scheme will generate £1.7m as it seeks to plug a gap of £24.5m in fresh cuts. In a statement to the ECHO provided last week, Liverpool Council was upbeat about progress ahead of today's first round of paid collections.
READ MORE: Everyone in Liverpool warned about £40 green bin phone call
Residents who did not make the cut off of April 8 for this week’s collections can still register via the city council. However, last week the authority warned of people posing as council officials over the phone attempting to scam residents. The council reaffirmed the charge is an opt-in service and “we are not proactively contacting residents about it” - urging residents to hang up if they receive calls about the bin charge.
In a statement to the ECHO last week, the council said it was “ahead of where it expected to be” at this stage, while being “on track” to get collection stickers out to those who signed up before April 8. Stickers are being sent out to households to apply to green bins to mark which ones are eligible for collection.
Cllr Abdul Qadir, cabinet member for neighbourhoods, said earlier this year that for the scheme to break even, a 33% take up is required - the equivalent of 49,000 homes across the city. Liverpool City Council has not yet provided an exact number on the amount of homes registered, but as of the end of March around 4,000 households had signed up.
Liverpool is now the fourth authority in the City Region to introduce the paid-for collection scheme, with green bin collections in Knowsley and Sefton still free. More than 2,000 people have called for the scheme to be scrapped via an online petition.
