NORTH West Leicestershire District Council has agreed to meet a shortfall of over £90,000 to fund separate food waste collections.

The decision was made at last night's (Tuesday) Cabinet meeting ahead of the rollout of mandatory separate food waste collections in England.

A request for £92,072 was approved and will be allocated from the council's business rates reserve fund - following a rejected request to DEFRA (Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs) to further fund the scheme.

The money will be used to cover a shortfall in funding to buy food waste containers and collection vehicles required to provide the weekly food waste collections by the end of March 2026.

The council has already been awarded £1.062 million from DEFRA'S new burdens capital grant to support the rollout of the collections. 

But the combined cost of the new containers and vehicles is expected to be £1.154 million, leading to the £92,000 shortfall.

Since 2019, NWLDC has successfully run a trial of separate food waste collections for 2,000 households in parts of Measham and its surrounding villages. 

The trial was expanded to a further 2,000 households to parts of Coalville, Whitwick and Ravenstone in 2020.

The council says that, to date, the trial has seen 849 tonnes of food waste recycled into green energy and a bio-fertiliser for use on farmland, instead of being disposed of as landfill or by incineration. 

This represents a total carbon saving of 637 tonnes CO₂ equivalent.

Following this cabinet recommendation, the decision on the allocation of funding from the council's business rates reserve will be made at a full council meeting on September 10.

Councillor Michael Wyatt, Deputy Leader and Communities and Climate Change Portfolio Holder at NWLDC, said: "Whilst I was disappointed to hear that our appeal to Defra for the funding to cover the shortfall had been rejected, I am pleased that we have found a way forward using the council's reserves.

Photo: North West Leicestershire District Council

"Every local authority in England is required to introduce weekly separate food waste collections by March 31, 2026. 

"Our trial of these collections has helped residents to support our green agenda and demonstrated the huge environmental benefits this service will have when it is rolled out nationwide.

"This cabinet recommendation leads the way to securing the funding we need to build on the success of our weekly food waste collection trial and replicate it for all households across the district."

The weekly food waste collection trial is part of Recycle More, a campaign adopted in 2019. 

Its main aim was to increase the number of materials residents can recycle at the kerbside, as well as increasing the district's overall recycling rate.