This Tuesday Royal Borough of Greenwich Council will review proposals to introduce ‘Garden Waste Charging’ this autumn as part of a package of cuts to services and increases in charges designed to address a massive financial deficit resulting from mismanagement by the Labour Councillors.
Buried in the Appendix of the fascinating sounding ‘2025/26 Q1 Budget Monitor’ is a range of policies which the Council has already agreed but is struggling to deliver. In amongst struggles with raising £0.25m from increased fines and £1.3m from cutting street sweeping we are informed that ‘Garden Waste Charging’ has been delayed. The reason given for the delay in raising £0.36m from extra charges to residents with gardens is “Roll-out moved to Nov ’25; winter months excluded from charges to manage subscriptions fairly.”
So in the absence of both the Leader and Deputy Leader of the Council it appears that residents with gardens will have an extra charge for picking up their green bins despite the fact they already pay Council Tax for this service.
The increases in charges seem to ignore the increase in fly tipping which Greenwich Council openly acknowledges resulted from the cuts to black bin collections in 2023. A Council report in January 2024 stated “Additional resources have been secured to increase the Taskforce Teams by 50%, to address the slight increase in fly-tipping since the introduction of Towards Zero Waste in February 2023.”
It seems quite ridiculous that the Council plans to increase charges for green bin collection, presumably based on whether you have a garden or not, ignoring the fact that this will probably reduce the composting rate, increase fly-tipping and hit poorest families hardest as this is a really regressive tax.