'˜You have bin given a chance'

A total of 278 people have so far signed the petition on Change.org which has been organised by Boston resident Stephanie Freeman.

Ms Freeman hopes to get at least 1,476 signatures - the same number of people who responded to the council’s original consultation which took place between October 19 and November 13, 2015, and included an online survey and forms sent to 2,000 randomly selected people.

She said : “I think the £30 a year charge is disgraceful.

“When we bought our bins we were told it was going to be a one-off payment.”

She said that ‘Boston has a lot more than 2,000 people’ and felt the consultation did not give a fair representation.

She said many people could not afford the charge – the equivalent of 58p a week – and raised concerns over an increase in landfill waste, fly-tipping and unwanted vermin.

However, a council spokesman said the authority ‘gave everyone a chance to have their say about the proposal to introduce a charge for kerbside collection of garden waste’.

They said: “The long, open-to-all consultation well before the suggested start of the new scheme (April 1) gave everyone an opportunity to comment and was heavily publicised, in local newspapers, on local radio and across social media.”

They said the arguments in the petition had been taken into account and added that 87.5 per cent of those who took the opportunity to have their say had said they were prepared to pay for the service.

They reiterated that it was not a mandatory charge, and that the council did not have a statutory duty to provide the garden waste service – pointing to other authorities following the same route. They said the council will not make a profit from the charge.

They said residents could still compost or take their waste to the Slippery Gowt centre at no additional cost.

The spokesman moved to reassure people there would ‘be no increase in waste going to landfill’ with waste which cannot be composted or recycled going to the Energy from Waste plant near Lincoln.