Brown Bin Renewal 2024/25

[spider69]

Just received renewal notice for the next year £80.00

If this is the new price what will the Council Tax look like?

 

[Spartacus]

Council tax will obviously go down as they are making su much from brown bins, ltns, bus gate and other fines that by now their coffers must be overflowing 🤣

Edited February 21, 2024 by Spartacus

[teddyboy23]

Followed by parking permits and council rents 

[Penguin68]

Council tax increase is I think limited to 5%. That is why the council is looking for revenue streams that sit outside the council tax envelope. Which they can hike (broadly) how they like. Such as charges against motorists. Or for non statutory services. 

[sally buying]

Found the original news letter 20/21 from Southwark for the brown bin service. In large letters on the front of the invite just £40.00.

What improvements are they now offering to warrant this price?

[tomskip]

I've said it before and I'll say it again! I really don't think anyone needs a large brown wheelie bin unless they have a vast garden/are such keen gardeners that they fill it every week.

You can buy paper garden sacks from the council. Put one or two of those out when you've had a busy pruning session. Keep a small compost heap in the garden for all your small prunings and fruit/veg waste, dead flowers etc. 

Say goodbye to that ugly brown bin on your driveway and get a brown kerbside bin. Keep that outside your back door for your non compostable food waste.

Surely in a borough with mainly small or modest back gardens, a full sized brown wheelie is just not needed for the majority of households. You don't need it if it spends most of the year empty or nearly empty. 

 

[rollflick]

If the brown bin price had simply gone up with inflation since the first £30 full year charged in 2020/1, it would be just £36 now.

Even the paper sacks are going up from £30 to £40 this April, so get in now quick while they are still err a bargain.

Bet it will be £100 for the brown bin in 2025!

Also worth adding that in Nov 2023, Defra scrapped plans to require councils to collect garden waste for free.

Southwark's assertion that it now needs to collect food and garden waste separately because of a forthcoming law turns out to be rubbish:

'An optional garden waste collection will be offered to all households, and councils can choose to co-collect food and garden waste if preferred.'

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consistency-in-household-and-business-recycling-in-england/outcome/government-response

Surely it could save some cash if it went back to combined collections? Food waste composts better when mixed with garden waste too.

[CPR Dave]

Just put it in the green bin and save £80.

 

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

1 hour ago, rollflick said:

Southwark's assertion that it now needs to collect food and garden waste separately because of a forthcoming law turns out to be rubbish:

Hold on, though - isn't that a proposal for something that would come in by 2026 from a government that isn't buying green bananas?

 

[fishboy]

On 21/02/2024 at 20:00, rollflick said:

Southwark's assertion that it now needs to collect food and garden waste separately because of a forthcoming law turns out to be rubbish:

'An optional garden waste collection will be offered to all households, and councils can choose to co-collect food and garden waste if preferred.'

https://www.gov.uk/government/consultations/consistency-in-household-and-business-recycling-in-england/outcome/government-response

Surely it could save some cash if it went back to combined collections? Food waste composts better when mixed with garden waste too.

Where is this assertion from, as they do currently (and have for some time - years?) collect the food & garden waste together. On collection day they open the big brown bins up and tip the contents of the small brown bins in, before tipping the whole lot in the back of the truck...

[Nigello]

Or do they select an empty (or almost empty) big brown bin and then bung in the contents of all the little ones? 

[Penguin68]

Veolia do not have any way of handling Kitchen and Garden waste separately locally (they do in some other parts of the country). They compost all organic waste. Where they do have separate facilities they would anaerobically digest Kitchen Waste to provide a fuel source rather than compost. That is why our organic waste is combined on collection. There would be no point in separating them. 

[tedfudge]

Making people pay for garden waste etc is making fly tipping in some areas even worse .. I'm not going to renew my brown bin for £80 what a RIP off that is .. I'm gonna throw in green bin save my money , council will lose money now if 100 people stopped paying that's a potential £8000 in revenue because they are getting to greedy

[Sue]

2 hours ago, tedfudge said:

Making people pay for garden waste etc is making fly tipping in some areas even worse .. I'm not going to renew my brown bin for £80 what a RIP off that is .. I'm gonna throw in green bin save my money , council will lose money now if 100 people stopped paying that's a potential £8000 in revenue because they are getting to greedy

Putting compostable material in the green bin is not exactly environmentally friendly, is it?

And the council is not "greedy". It has services to provide which possibly you and your family might need some day, and like other local councils,  it has had its funding cut by the Tories, so it has to bring in money from somewhere.

 

 

[tedfudge]

Dont care if its environmentally friendly or not , we need money to survive now and pay for food etc not waste £80 on a bin , we all pay our extortionate council tax so we shouldn't be paying anyway 

[Spartacus]

That's a fair point Ted 

A lot of people are suffering with financial pressures and councils seem to believe residents can dig deeper and stump up extra cash when some can't even put three meals a day on the table. 

If councils were run like businesses they would either all have gone out of business by now or trimmed their sails to suit the wind by reducing internal inefficiencies and waste.

[tedfudge]

At sue , do you think the people of southwark or even the UK on their own can solve all of the environmental problems in the world on our own ? And putting garden waste into a brown bin is going to solve the environmental  problems of the world ? I do my bit for the environment by doing my recycling and driving a electric van , southwark council are causing more pollution by having LTNs and causing the traffic jams and vehicles to idle, believe me iam all for the environment but I'm afraid what happens to the earth in 200 , 500 or one thousand years from now is not my concern , I need to makesure that I can keep myself and my family alive now the same as many other people who are finding it difficult to pay for food and pay their Bills,  so I'm afraid I will be putting my garden waste into MY green bin which I pay for via my council tax and save my £80 which would help pay for my electric or gas or food .. 

Also heard that council may only be collecting green and blue bins once a month,  not confirmed but just hear say at the moment ... 

Edited February 26, 2024 by tedfudge

[OutOfFocus]

3 hours ago, Spartacus said:

councils seem to believe residents can dig deeper

I think this is an MP rather than a councillor issue. 

[Sue]

3 hours ago, tedfudge said:

At sue , do you think the people of southwark or even the UK on their own can solve all of the environmental problems in the world on our own ? And putting garden waste into a brown bin is going to solve the environmental  problems of the world ? I do my bit for the environment by doing my recycling and driving a electric van , southwark council are causing more pollution by having LTNs and causing the traffic jams and vehicles to idle, believe me iam all for the environment but I'm afraid what happens to the earth in 200 , 500 or one thousand years from now is not my concern , I need to makesure that I can keep myself and my family alive now the same as many other people who are finding it difficult to pay for food and pay their Bills,  so I'm afraid I will be putting my garden waste into MY green bin which I pay for via my council tax and save my £80 which would help pay for my electric or gas or food .. 

Also heard that council may only be collecting green and blue bins once a month,  not confirmed but just hear say at the moment ... 

"What happens to the earth" is happening right now, and things are going to get very bad indeed long before the 200 years you quote.

It is because many many individuals and organisations have thought in the past that the environment was "not their concern" that we are in the state we are in.

But hey ho. 

Here's a constructive suggestion.

Why don't neighbours share a brown bin and each contribute to the cost? Or take it in turns to take everybody's garden waste to the recycling centre off the Old Kent Road?

Oh, and if the council was going to only collect from the blue bins once a month, that would mean a great many people were not doing their recycling, surely?

I despair.

[Alec1]

I was going to say about sharing brown bins, plus taking turns to go to the recycle centre.  I would encourage composting though, as it irks me that we pay the council to remove our compostable waste, who compost it, bag it, then sell it back to us!  

[Dogkennelhillbilly]

11 hours ago, Spartacus said:

If councils were run like businesses they would either all have gone out of business

That is the most banal, predictable observation possible on this subject.

If the council were run like a business, it wouldn't bothering to provide services that don't make a profit for its owners, like aged care or pre-school childcare or social services to try to keep kids out of abusive situations. Those ungrateful sods never put their hands in their pocket for anything. It wouldn't bother having environmental officers to stop take aways dumping their rubbish on the street. It wouldn't piss around maintaining parks or fixing street lights. It wouldn't fund firefighters or police.

If the council were a business, it would probably be much more interested in developing an app for getting gig "contractors" to deliver laughing gas in disposable plastic hookahs tax free to children so it can seek venture capital funding from Saudi Arabia and dodge VAT, or something. But the council isn't a business, and shouldn't be run like one, and we should be grateful for that.

https://www.southwark.gov.uk/council-tax/a-guide-to-your-council-tax?chapter=2

Edited February 26, 2024 by Dogkennelhillbilly

[vladi]

7 hours ago, Sue said:

"

Here's a constructive suggestion.

Why don't neighbours share a brown bin and each contribute to the cost? Or take it in turns to take everybody's garden waste to the recycling centre off the Old Kent Road?

We do that already with our neighbours either side, using 2 large custom-made composters. The aggregate volume means there is always enough  heat generated constantly which accelerates the process. The output is shared. Between us we share one brown bin for thick   branches that cannot be composted.

[Sue]

1 hour ago, vladi said:

We do that already with our neighbours either side, using 2 large custom-made composters. The aggregate volume means there is always enough  heat generated constantly which accelerates the process. The output is shared. Between us we share one brown bin for thick   branches that cannot be composted.

That's great! 

But I'm guessing you must have quite large gardens if there are two large composters?

[Penguin68]

12 hours ago, Dogkennelhillbilly said:

If the council were a business, it would probably be much more interested in developing an app for getting gig "contractors" to deliver laughing gas

Most of what councils do are not 'business' - the problems often arise when they enter into the business space - so renting out space in the parks to raise money must be handled as a business, with proper contracts which ensure that the 'owners' rights are protected. Council's are not staffed or trained to be entrepreneurial, but they are acting as entrepreneurs when they rent out public space.

They need contracts which specify clearly, for instance who pays for remedial/ tidying work after an event (the event 'owners') - how quickly the event owners must restore and quit the site and so on. I suspect that they do not use dedicated event lawyers or event managers to ensure that their (our) best interests are contractually served, relying on in-house people.

But (if they do) they are relying on people not expert in 'business' issues. I do not feel, when we come across the annual commercial park event season, that it is us, the 'owners' of the space, who are coming out best (or even, even) in these deals.

This is an entirely different business model from letting local charities and event holders use public space for a local fair or fund raiser, and needs different specialists to set terms, conditions and penalties for non compliance.

So, absolutely yes, Councils are not businesses, but there are clearly times when not to act like one is to betray their electors. They will have volunteer first aiders, for instance, but I expect them to employ qualified doctors for their occupational health service (which I'm sure they also have). They should employ lawyers (if they don't) skilled in business law, and managers skilled in entrepreneurial issues when they let our property to commercial enterprises working for profit.

[Jenny I]

Can someone tell me, if instead of renewing the garden subscription I buy the garden bags, is collection of those free?