Council to charge for uplifts

Dec 11 2009 by Lex Brown, Irvine Herald

NORTH Ayrshire Council are to charge a flat rate of £12 to pick up old furniture and white goods as they struggle to save cash.

The new charge will cover the collection of up to five heavy items such as fridges, freezers or cookers.

The controversial move has been on the cards for some time and this week the executive was told the current free collection scheme was costing £426,000.

Currently the council makes 42,000 collections equating to 3330 tonnes of waste.

The material is mechanically sorted by contractors to extract anything which can be recycled.

The council have to consider the effect of dumping the items in landfill sites.

Landfill tax has soared from £10 a tonne in 1999 to the current rate of £40.

The tax will continue to rise by £8 a tonne until 2013 when it will cost the local authority £72 a tonne to dump waste.

It will cost the council an estimated £240,000 to dump rubbish.

The executive was told 19 of Scotland’s 32 councils charge for heavy uplifts.

Charges varied between £5 to £28 with an average of £18.71.

A simple across the board system was the best answer.