·Online and telephone surveys set up as part of Sutton’s Future

·Service costs £736,000 a year to operate

Sutton Council is asking its residents to help decide the future of green garden waste collection in the borough.

The change is part of the Sutton’s Future campaign which encourages the public to work with the council to help make £40m worth of savings to the council’s annual budget. The savings are being forced by unprecedented reductions to our funding and growing demand for council services.

The discretionary service, which is currently free, costs £736,000 a year. The significant cost, combined with the fact that many people without gardens or home compost pay for a service they don’t use while others use it irregularly, means the council is proposing to change the service by either stopping it and providing alternatives or charging for it.

Green garden waste collection (GGW) is currently paid for by Sutton’s 78,174 households through their council tax bill, although the vast majority of the borough’s 27,336 flats, maisonettes and apartments don’t use it.

It is a service that is also charged for in neighbouring boroughs. For example Kingston charge £71 a year, Merton charge £65 a year and Richmond charge £60 a year.

Sutton Council is offering on a range of ways where people can make their views known. There will be three ‘Have Your Say’ events where people can share their views. A GGW online survey will run between 9 September and 3 October, and there will also be a telephone survey of 1,000 residents. Participants of the telephone survey will be picked at random.

The council is proposing two options for residents to have their say on:

·Option One – To charge for the service so that only those who use it pay for it. The council would provide customers with a 240 litre capacity wheeled bin (equivalent to three current sacks) but charge users £59 per annum for the service (£49 if they sign up before 15 February every year). There are other options such as smaller bins, shared bins and biodegradable sacks if space is limited. The collections would start in July 2015 and continue to be fortnightly. We would need to sign up at least 10,000 customers for this service to be viable, otherwise the service will be stopped.

The charge is comparable to neighbouring boroughs of Merton, Richmond and Kingston.

·Option Two – To stop fortnightly collections but help residents with other ways of dealing with green garden waste including providing a free compost bin (£5 delivery charge) and community composting sites around the borough

Councillor Colin Hall, Deputy Leader of Sutton Council, said:

“With £40m to save from our annual budget there are hard decisions to be made. We are trying to be as fair as possible. Green Garden Waste collection is a service currently paid for by everyone, although thousands of households don’t have access to it.

“We want to hear what residents think about the future of the service. We can either stop it and provide alternatives such as composting, or we can charge for it to cover the £736,000 a year it costs to run the service. We are proposing a charge of £59 with an early bird discount to £49 – so that’s roughly £1 a week.

“From September 9, people can have their say via the green garden waste online survey or find out more about our workshops by visiting www.suttonsfuture.org.”

The events where people can discuss Green Garden Waste are:

·Have Your Say event, 7.30pm to 9.30pm, Wednesday 24 September at Holy Trinity Church, Malden Road, Wallington, SM6 8BL

·Have Your Say event, 6.30pm to 8.30pm, Thursday 25 September at MR1, Civic Offices, St Nicholas Way, SM1 1EA

·Have Your Say event, 2pm to 4pm, Tuesday 30 September at Sutton Life Centre, 24 Alcorn Close, SM3 9PX