Garden waste recycling scheme

The council continues to face significant financial pressures, including due to rising costs across the board and increasing demand for statutory services for the borough’s vulnerable children and adults.

The council has also identified that it needs to make £100m of additional savings over the next four years in order to deliver a balanced budget for its medium-term financial strategy.

It is therefore essential that the council looks to alternative sources of revenue generation – the alternative would be to cut essential frontline services.

The collection of garden waste is not a core service that councils are required to provide and more than 65% of local authorities across England are already charging for this service and many have been doing so for several years.

Following public consultation, in February 2023, the council agreed its medium-term financial strategy to 2026/27, which contains the agreed proposal to introduce a subscription service for the collection of green waste in Cheshire East. 

In July 2023, the council’s environment and communities committee approved the implementation details of the scheme.

Residents will only pay for the service if they opt-in to the scheme and it remains free for residents to dispose of their garden waste at our household waste recycling centres.

We remain committed to protecting and enhancing Cheshire East’s environment and delivering on the aims and priorities as set out in our corporate plan.

This includes continuing to encourage people to think about the impact of their actions on the environment and to ‘reduce, reuse and recycle’ their waste.

The council continues to work with Get Composting to provide home composting products. You can also find lots of information and advice about getting started with home composting.

There is no evidence to suggest that we will see any increase in fly-tipping as a result of a subscription service being introduced.

We have spoken to other councils that have introduced similar schemes and they have not seen an increase. Importantly, fly-tipping is a crime and anyone caught doing it could be prosecuted and face a large fine.

The collection of garden waste is not a core service that councils are required to provide and more than 65% of local authorities across England are already charging for this service and many have been doing so for several years.

Your Council Tax will not be reduced now that there is a subscription to pay for your garden waste collection. The Council Tax you pay is based on the Valuation Band of your property.

The payments you make are a tax that contributes towards the costs of all council services, rather than a direct payment for an individual service such as garden waste collection.

The contents of the Council Tax bill are prescribed by legislation therefore the charge for the garden waste collection cannot be added to the Council Tax bill.

You can find out more on the About Council Tax page.