Weekly bin collections set to make a return?

Weekly bin collections could return across the country with councils set to be offered financial incentives, it was revealed today.

The Government is planning to offer financial incentives worth £100 million to councils to get them to collect household rubbish every week.

South Staffordshire, Cannock, Stafford, Lichfield and Wyre Forest councils collect rubbish fortnightly while Wolverhampton, Dudley, Sandwell and Walsall are still on weekly rounds for ordinary waste and fortnightly for recycling.

Different councils also impose a different number of bins on households.

Wolverhampton City Council has provided six bins including two for food slops, a bag for cardboard and plastic, a box for paper, cans and glass and wheelie bins for normal and garden waste while the other Black Country authorities currently have three.

The Government wants to use financial incentives to bring back weekly rounds using a similar scheme to the grants that froze council tax this year.

More than half of councils have abandoned weekly bin collections over the past few years.

Labour ordered the councils to scale back collections to try to get more people to recycle.

But there are complaints that the waste sitting uncollected leads to smells and fly-tipping.

South Staffordshire Council axed weekly collections in 2004.

Independent councillor David Clifft said: "I have mixed views on this. It has been a long time now and people have got used to it. I do think it helps encourage people to recycle."

The World Health Organisation has recommended that waste should be collected weekly in countries with a climate such as the Britain's.

Fortnightly services were part of the reason for a 70 per cent rise in the number of rats each summer since 1999, according to the National Pest Technicians' Association.

Britain faces huge fines from the European Union if it does not dramatically reduce the amount of rubbish sent to landfill.

But the government's communities secretary Eric Pickles said he believed weekly collections should return.

Last year he claimed: "It's a basic right for every English man and woman to be able to put the remnants of their chicken tikka masala in their bin without having to wait a fortnight for it to be collected."

By Daniel Wainwright