10,000 people need to sign up by the 15th February 2015 to make the service viable. Stopping the free service will save £736,000 a year

Sutton Council will begin charging for Green Garden Waste Collection from July 2015 provided 10,000 people sign up for the service.

Residents have until 15th February 2015 to sign up for the service. They can either do that online by visitingwww.sutton.gov.uk/ggw or they will receive a form in the post to fill in and send back to the council.

A 240 litre bin will be charged at £59 annually with an early bird discount rate of £49 on offer if people sign up before the 15th February 2015. That’s cheaper than neighbouring boroughs of Kingston (£71), Merton (£65) and Richmond (£60). This decision was taken by Thursday’sEnvironment and Neighbourhood’s Committee after almost 2,000 people had their say on the future of the service. The consultation was part of the council’s Sutton’s Future campaign which encourages residents to help the council achieve £40m of savings from its annual budget by 2019. The savings are being forced by unprecedented government reductions to funding and growing demand for council services.

Residents were given the option of the current free service becoming a charged for service, or being stopped completely. The paid for service will start on1 July, 2015if enough residents sign up. If they don’t, the service is likely stop in April 2015. The council will begin promoting the sign up to residents in the coming weeks.

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

“There has been enough interest in having a paid for service that we are going to support residents by seeing if we can get enough people to sign up to make it viable. Most people who took part in the consultation understood the rationale of stopping the free service because of the budgetary pressures we are under. The fact that we had almost 2,000 responses shows that our residents want to help shape Sutton’s Future. If enough people sign up, then the charge of £59 annually, with an early bird discount to £49 works out roughly as £1 a week – that’s cheaper than our neighbouring boroughs charge. We really need to get to the 10,000 mark so please sign up if you are interested online or via the leaflet that will be coming through your door.”

Consultation results

The borough-wide consultation included a telephone survey representative of the borough, an online survey on the Sutton’s Future website and three ‘Have Your Say’ events where residents could give their views in person and ask questions. In the telephone survey, 79% of those surveyed had a garden and 74% of these used the current service. Out of the 1,002 people surveyed, 32% were in favour of charging for the service and 42% supported it being stopped. In the online survey, out of the 892 people that took part, 69% favoured the chargeable service and 60% said they intended to subscribe; 11% said they supported the service stopping. In the three ‘Have Your Say’ events, the preferred option among the 92 attendees was to charge for the service. The events were held in Wallington, Sutton Civic Offices and the Life Centre.