Funding agreed to support rollout of district-wide food waste collections
Published: Wed 21 August, 2024
North West Leicestershire District Council’s Cabinet has agreed to allocate additional funding ahead of the rollout of mandatory separate food waste collections in England.
The request for £92,072 was approved at the cabinet meeting on Tuesday 20 August, and will be allocated from the council’s business rates reserve fund.
The money will be used to cover a shortfall in funding to buy food waste containers and collection vehicles required to provide separate weekly food waste collections by the end of March 2026.
The council has already been awarded £1.062 million from the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (Defra) new burdens capital grant to support the rollout of the new collections.
However, the combined cost of the new containers and vehicles is expected to be £1.154 million, leading to the £92,000 shortfall.
Cabinet’s recommendation to allocate money from the council’s business rates reserve fund follows Defra rejecting an appeal by NWLDC for the additional funding.
Food waste collection trial
Since 2019, NWLDC has successfully run a trial of separate food waste collections for 2,000 households in parts of Measham and its surrounding villages. The trial was expanded to a further 2,000 households to parts of Coalville, Whitwick and Ravenstone in 2020.
To date, the trial has seen 849 tonnes of food waste recycled into green energy and a bio-fertiliser for use on farmland, instead of being disposed of as landfill or by incineration. This represents a total carbon saving of 637 tonnes CO₂ equivalent.
Following this cabinet recommendation, the decision on allocation of the funding from the council’s business rates reserve will be made at a full council meeting on 10 September.
Councillor Michael Wyatt, Deputy Leader and Communities and Climate Change Portfolio Holder at NWLDC, said: "Whilst I was disappointed to hear that our appeal to Defra for the funding to cover the shortfall had been rejected, I am pleased that we have found a way forward using the council’s reserves.
“Every local authority in England is required to introduce weekly separate food waste collections by 31 March 2026. Our trial of these collections has helped residents to support our green agenda and demonstrated the huge environmental benefits this service will have when it is rolled out nationwide.
“This cabinet recommendation leads the way to securing the funding we need to build on the success of our weekly food waste collection trial and replicate it for all households across the district.”