Parish council powers - waste collection

Question

Our district council currently provides a free green waste collection service.  They are considering removing this, and instead providing a paid-for subscription service.  Part of the argument is that green waste collection is not a statutory service to be provided by a district council.  So my questions - 1. does a parish council have the power (under general power of competence perhaps) to provide a green waste collection service to its parishioners?  2. if so, is anyone aware of a PC that has done this (or something similar)?  Thanks.

Answer 1

In theory, any local council, or indeed any group of individuals, has powers under the Community Right to Challenge provisions of the Localism Act 2011, sections 81 to 86. The legislation aims to give communities the right to take over the running of local services if they feel they can do a better job.

I doubt whether anyone has used these powers to set up a waste collection service, as such activities require scale to be financially viable.

Comments

Thanks, Dave, that is helpful.  I was thinking more in terms of the parish council sub-contracting the collection to an established serviced provider, rather than setting up a new service.

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I would imagine that would be astronomically expensive and a great strain on the precept.  We pay for a collection of tetrapak cartons and pay £75 per month for 2 bins to be emptied once a month.  If you are thinking of collecting a bin from every household, every one or two weeks, the costs will soon mount up.  The LA can do this as they have economies of scale and their own facilities and equipment.

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I've only just started looking at the numbers, but expect that it could be done for less that the LA are proposing.  They expect this to be a profit making service, so my instinct is that a private service could be cheaper.  If it did turn out to be more expensive than the LA then of course I'd drop the idea.  However, before developing this idea any further I wanted to be confident that the parish council could take it on if they so wished.

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You would be asking the people without gardens to subsidise the cost of those with gardens. At least with the district council scheme only those that need the service have to pay for it.

I'm guessing if it was possible to provide the service materially cheaper then some private businesses would have given it a try by now. You say the council expect to make a profit, and of course the private business you hire to do it will wish to make a profit also. Probably a higher rate of profit for one village than for a whole district.

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They are all valid points, and I agree with you re: the subsidisation point. My concern is that the removal of the free service leads to fly tipping which the PC has to deal with. I was also considering trying to get multiple PCs affected to join a new scheme to get bigger economies of scale but, as above, would drop the idea if the economics don’t make sense.