£49 Solihull tax row as council leader says some pay for service they don't use

Council chiefs have defended a plan to charge Solihull taxpayers an extra £49 if they want to keep their - currently free - garden waste collection service. The rear guard action was mounted at a meeting after council leader Coun Ian Courts said those without a garden or who did not currently use the service were paying for a facility they did not benefit from.

As the Local Democracy Reporting Service previously reported, householders face paying extra for a fortnightly collection of their garden waste from next summer. Cash-strapped Solihull Council currently does not charge for the service although householders can pay around £90-a-year to have an extra bin to collect additional garden waste.

A decision on whether to introduce the charge will be made at the next meeting of the cabinet at the Civic Suite on Thursday, December 12. But the plan was heavily-criticised at a full council meeting on Tuesday, December 10. Labour councillor Hazel Dawkins asked: “Can the cabinet member advise what consultation has taken place with residents on the proposal to rush through the introduction of charges next year.”

READ MORE: Thousands of households set to start paying for garden waste collections next year

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Coun Ken Hawkins, the cabinet portfolio holder for environment and infrastructure which includes waste collections, responded: “It is not being rushed, it has still to be determined by cabinet. It would take effect next July.

“We had a residents' survey in July, August. We also had one in 2016. There has been lots of communication.”

Coun Dawkins said the survey showed 60 per cent of residents did not want to pay a contribution towards collection of garden waste. Coun Hawkins said: “I don’t want to be flippant - ‘I’ll vote to pay money or pay more tax’.

“Other authorities have been doing this for a decade or more, and it came up with similar issues when they consulted.” Coun Ade Adeyamo, the leader of the Liberal Democrat Group on the authority, accused the Conservative leadership of having “ducked the issue” when he raised it at October’s cabinet meeting during a debate on household waste changes.

Coun Hawkins replied: “The short and simple answer is the household waste collection is a statutory duty, we have to (discuss) that. Green waste isn’t and green waste wasn’t discussed at that meeting.

“The work to consider charging has taken place. It took more than a few months to do that. The financial pressures affecting this council mean it is timely to consider the issue now.”

Coun Adeyamo also asked: “Why are we bypassing all the members here, and I include the Conservatives as well. It is not right for you to go straight to cabinet and bypass everybody.

“Why have members not been given an opportunity to debate this?" Coun Hawkins replied: “You have an opportunity in February to make this a free service - I will be looking forward to your budget proposals.”

Earlier this week, Coun Courts defended the potential charge. In his weekly public briefing note he wrote: “Solihull is one of only two local authorities in the West Midlands and Warwickshire not to charge for the service.

“It costs us about £1.8m a year to run the service, and this charge would help us to recoup some of that. If you don’t have a garden or don’t use the garden waste service you are paying for a service you do not receive.

“We have been forced to look at ways we might be able to cut costs and raise revenue, this seems to me to be a fair way of doing so.”