WHEELIE bins and fortnightly recycling collections are coming to Malvern.

Malvern Hills District Council announced yesterday major changes to its waste collection service after receiving £1.67 million government funding.

It says the cash will secure the future of weekly black sack collections while allowing it to introduce new recycling arrangements that meet new requirements for collecting glass.

From next spring recycling will no longer be collected in sacks every week, with homes instead receiving a green wheelie bin that will be emptied once a fortnight.

Coun Bronwen Behan, responsible for environmental control, called the funding announcement “a great win for everyone in Malvern”.

“Without this grant funding the council would not have been able to afford to continue its highly-valued weekly black sack collections because of the huge cost of changes to recycling collections needed to make separate collection of glass for recycling from 2015,” she added.

But wheelie bins are far from universally popular.

Their introduction was first suggested as far back as 2008 but discarded after public consultation.

And despite voting to pursue the government funding back in August councillors were far from enthusiastic, some saying they felt “between a rock and a hard place”.

Tom Wells, leader of the opposing Lib Dem/Green/ Independent group, remains convinced that wheelie bins are wrong for Malvern and is urging his council to run a full public consultation before pressing ahead.

“Yes they work elsewhere but Malvern presents practical problems in terms of its topography and is also somewhere that trades to a huge degree on the quality of its landscape,”

he said.

“Our streets are not going to look the same with wheelie bins stacked up and down the sides.

“I don’t believe the majority of residents are particularly warm to this.

Like me they want to preserve our townscape.”

MHDC says concessions will be made for homes where the standard wheelie bins are not deemed appropriate – either in the form of a smaller bin or a continued sack service.

Officers have been creating a database of all homes in the district and will shortly be writing to residents informing them what their arrangements will be.

They believe about 15 per cent of properties – roughly 5,000 of 33,500 in the Malvern Hills dIstrict – will require continued sack collections.

Ivor Pumfrey, head of community services, expects this number to drop once the scheme is implemented.

“Once people have them and see the benefits, then others start asking for them,” he said.

A condition of the government grant scheme is that weekly waste collections are maintained for at least five years. MHDC says it aims to continue them for “as long as possible”

after that period.

􀁥 Are wheelie bins right for Malvern? Have your say at at malverngazette.co.uk.