Harborough Council Set to Charge Residents of New Builds for Bins

Harborough Council Set to Charge
Residents of New Builds for Bins

Harborough District Council is going to introduce charges for providing wheelie bins to newly-built homes in order to save money. The council expects that 3748 homes will be built in the district in the next five years, and they have estimated that providing them with new bins would cost £58,000 per year.

The council said that they have chosen not to impose charges on residents so far but now they have to introduce them because of budget pressures.

Households are required to have a 180 litre black bin for general waste and a 240 litre blue bin for recyclable waste. The council plan to charge £47.50 and £45.41 respectively for the bins from September.

The council are also set to remove the option for larger families to have a 360 litre black bin because they cost £95. The council said that this will hopefully encourage people to recycle more instead of discarding waste that will end up in landfill.

The councillor who is in charge of waste and recycling said that more housing is being built all of the time and the council have to provide resources to these houses with a finite budget so they have to look at how they spend every penny. He added that the council aren’t asking people to buy their own bins, the bins will remain the property of the council.

Other councillors have criticised the move, saying that housing developers should subsidise the cost of providing bins to new homes. They also added that the people being charged for bins pay council tax so they would expect that a bin would be included as part of it. Councillors from the opposition said that residents of the new homes would be paying council tax and they have accused the council of using the bin charge as another income stream.