TOWN Hall bosses have approved controversial plans to introduce wheelie bins and fortnightly waste collections in Tendring.

Tendring Council will move from weekly to fortnightly collections next year for non-recyclable waste as part of a seven-year extension to its waste and recycling contract with Veolia.

Most homes in the district will have a black 180-litre wheelie bin for non-recyclable waste, which will be collected fortnightly, from the summer of 2019.

Michael Talbot, cabinet member for environment, said: “Replacing black bags with wheelie bins should stop the problem of animals tearing open rubbish and leaving it strewn across our streets.

“While I sympathise with people who say bins are unsightly, I believe they are much neater than this current situation.

“Changes made to our street cleaning contract alongside waste collection also means we can create a second hit team to tackle fly-tipping and waste issues.

“By moving to fortnightly residual waste collections we also hope to encourage people to recycle more – in other districts where this change in frequency has been made, this has been the effect.

“However, the council has taken a decision to provide larger wheelie bins than we were offered funding for, so that homes should not have any issues with fitting all their rubbish in them.”

Mr Talbot said carrying on with the existing contract without the changes would have cost the council at least £400,000 on top of the £4.25million it already pays each year.

“With our new negotiated deal there is only a slight increase in cost,” he added.

The council said its four-week consultation, to which 483 people responded, found 53 per cent were in favour and 35 per cent were against the plans.

The cabinet was criticised by opposition councillors for planning to make the decision in private, but the final decision was made in public - something council bosses claim was always their intention.

Labour group leader Ivan Henderson said: “They never even debated it properly amongst themselves in public.

“Tendring Council are hiding the costs in the private part of the agenda, which I don’t believe they need to do.”

Mr Henderson was also angry that the council plans to allocate £1.3million of its New Homes Bonus from the Government to pay towards the waste contract, which he said should be saved for regeneration projects.

Mr Talbot added that due to the commercially sensitive nature of the contract, part of the report could not be made public.

He added: “We have been as open and transparent as possible with the options considered, the consultation responses, and the decision was made in public.”

The council’s cabinet approved the plans at a meeting on Friday.

Households that are unsuitable for wheelie bins, such as some terraced properties and flats, will continue to have a weekly black bag collection and assisted collections will also continue.

Existing recycling arrangements – alternate weekly collections of paper and card, plastic bottles, tins, cans and aerosols – will remain unchanged, along with weekly food waste collections.