Households in Rutland will continue to have their black bins collected every fortnight after the county council's leadership listened to residents' protests.

There was a public outcry and a petition launched by the county's MP after the Liberal Democrat administration that runs the authority said last November that a change to a three weekly refuse collection could be a possibility if more government funding did not come its way. 

But at a cabinet meeting this morning (Tuesday, June 10) the administration, which is led by Gale Waller, decided to remain with the two-week collections and instead provide households with smaller black bins. A new weekly food waste collection in smaller caddies will also be introduced.

Cllr Waller said: "The three weekly collection was an option. It wasn't our preferred option at any point, but it was an option that we needed to consider, particularly as an awful lot of other authorities collect their residual waste on a three-weekly cycle, some are even considering moving to a four-weekly cycle. 

"I think yet again Rutland is responding to what our residents want, which is to continue the two-weekly and we have found the means to do it, in part because our residents have played their part by increasing recycling and decreasing residual waste." 

Cabinet member for environment Christine Wise said she was 'excited' to introduce the new scheme.

She said household waste put into the black bins had already decreased from 8.66 kilos each week in 2022 to 6.84 kilos currently and the new scheme would reduce wastage more and mean less is sent to incinerators. The existing 240 litre bins will be replaced by 140 litre bins. 

She said: "Through a combination of an improvement in our recycling contract achieved by officers and an improvement in recycling rates achieved by our residents we are in a position to be able to afford to offer fortnightly collections with smaller bins.  

"For those who want to know why we can't just carry on as we are with an extra food waste collection – we can't afford to. There is strong evidence that there needs to be a reduction in residual capacity to drive behaviour change, old habits die hard." 

She continued: "A three weekly collection has marginal advantages over the smaller bin collected every other week but public/residents will find the smaller bin and the fortnightly collection an easier change to make, as we introduce the food waste and certainly a brief read of social media back in November would suggest it will be the more popular option." 

The prediction is the smaller black bin collections will reduce waste processing costs by just over £250,000 per year. The new food waste collection service will start in March next year at the same time as the smaller black bins are introduced. The mixed recycling collections will remain as they currently are. The authority has allocated around £530,000 towards new transport lorries and £204,000 for new food caddy bins and waste side containers. Some of this funding is from the central government. 

The details of how much the new black bins will cost the authority are being kept under wraps for 'commercial sensitivity reasons.' They will be paid for from community infrastructure levy monies, which are paid to the authority by developers for community benefit schemes.