WREXHAM Council has performed a u-turn on plans to introduce three weekly bin collections.

It comes despite a report being presented to backbench councillors which argued strongly in favour of moving away from the current fortnightly service for black bins.

Ahead of a meeting of the local authority’s homes and environment scrutiny committee, members were warned failing to change the frequency could incur costs of more than £800,000.

The figures included a predicted fine of over £500,000 from the Welsh Government for not meeting recycling targets.

But at the start of yesterday’s debate, council leader Mark Pritchard revealed the proposals were set to be withdrawn.

The head of the ruling independent/Conservative coalition said: “As lead member for organisation, I have prepared a report on the revenue budget for 2020/21 which will go out later today and be considered at the executive board next week.

“In this report, I am recommending that the council does not change its refuse collection and recycling arrangements and does not move to three weekly collections in the next budget year.

“I believe that other lead members will support this position next week, but clearly I would not want to pre-empt the executive board’s consideration.

“The reason why I’ve come here is because some things have been said and I wanted to come along to show leadership and clarify where we are as an administration on three weekly bin collections.”

The council currently collects waste from approximately 62,000 households in Wrexham.

It originally said the move to three weekly collections would help to reduce carbon emissions after it recently declared a climate emergency.

The plans were abandoned after the authority received an uplift of 3.5 per cent to its funding from Cardiff, which has also resulted in other proposed cuts being withdrawn. 

However, Cllr David A Bithell, lead member for environment and transport, said alternative options would need to be considered to meet the Welsh Government’s target for 70 per cent of waste to be recycled by 2025.

He said: “I think the leader’s given some assurance about the position for the next financial year.

“However, what we do need to do is to consider the long term aspirations of reaching our statutory target of 70 per cent by 2025.

“I know Welsh Government are currently looking at their waste strategy and in the next few weeks there will be a consultation on waste.

“That might increase the target for local authorities, although we’re not sure at this stage.”

Most community leaders welcomed the scrapping of the initial proposals.

Liberal Democrat leader Alun Jenkins questioned whether a public awareness campaign could be launched to improve recycling rates instead.

He said: “I remember the days going back to 2002 when our recycling rate was three per cent.

“It took a concerted effort at that time with a huge campaign to explain things to the public and to win their hearts and minds so that they would accept recycling.

“That step change that is needed to get us over 70 per cent is a major one and is not one we can do by tweaking.

“In order to achieve this, we’ve got to have a new change of approach where we go back to the public again.”

Opposition councillors also cautioned against reintroducing the change to three weekly collections in future years.

Labour’s Graham Rogers said: “It’s not happening this year but guaranteed it will be on the agenda for next year, so I’d like to make my position quite clear.

“I will not support three weekly collections, it’s as simple as.”

At the end of the meeting, councillors voted to set up a taskforce to consider how the target can be met.