Providing food waste collection services to blocks of flats needs support from residents and the managers and agents responsible for maintaining them. Councils have experienced problems in blocks of flats where managing agents have refused to allow food waste collection from their buildings and other blocks where the cleanliness of the bin stores have had a negative impact on residents’ willingness to use the services.
About the Local Government Association
The Local Government Association (LGA) is the national voice of local government. We are a politically led, cross party membership organisation, representing councils from England and Wales.
Our role is to support, promote and improve local government, and raise national awareness of the work of councils. Our ultimate ambition is to support councils to deliver local solutions to national problems.
Key messages
- We support food waste collections, but councils must have flexibility on how the service is provided locally, for example in the frequency of collection, and the cost of providing the service to households must be fully funded by government through new burdens funding.
- Defra has confirmed the allocation of transitional capital funding to individual waste collection authorities towards the cost of implementing mandatory, weekly food waste collections in 2026. Some councils have raised concerns over the allocations and have been encouraged to speak with Defra about these, for example, where the figures estimated by Defra will not cover the actual cost of buying vehicles and other capital costs incurred by councils. Work continues to understand the ongoing cost of mandatory food waste services, including transitionary and ongoing revenue costs.
- While we welcome additional funding to aid councils in collecting food waste, this does not cover the full cost of collecting and disposing of food waste. We are concerned that councils already collecting food waste have not received any additional funding, effectively penalising those councils.
- Managing food waste in flats needs more consideration and will be a more challenging part of the service to deliver. Flat dwellers experience multiple challenges, with less storage space and more inconvenience in taking food waste from the kitchen to a communal bin for collection.
Background
Providing food waste collection services to blocks of flats is not just a matter of giving out bins. It needs support from residents and well as the managers and agents responsible for maintaining the blocks. Councils have experienced problems in blocks of flats where managing agents have refused to allow food waste collection from their buildings and other blocks where the cleanliness of the bin stores have had a negative impact on residents’ willingness to partake in the services. Government should further consider the appropriateness and availability of community treatment facilities such as wormeries or micro-AD and develop non-statutory guidance and funding to aid implementation in areas with many blocks of flats and communal properties. Local determination when it comes to service design is essential if government is going to achieve the uptake of food waste recycling in flats.
Defra must set out their plans for supporting new investment in food waste infrastructure. Our analysis indicates significant regional variations in the availability of food waste processing plants. This has a knock-on effect on costs and gate fees.
Steps should be taken to prevent food waste in the first place. Councils are already doing excellent work to implement policies that reduce food waste at the source. Bristol City Council are an example of where policies can make a dramatic difference in reducing food waste. By implementing a good food and catering procurement policy to require council-linked food services to produce an annually reviewed plan for reducing food waste and minimising its impact. Messaging initiatives that educate and encourage residents to use food waste bins. Bio-fuel generation schemes can also use food waste to produce biogas and biofertilizer. Anaerobic digestion systems can be used to produce electricity or upgrade it to biomethane to fuel ‘bio-buses’.
Councils work with businesses to adopt circular waste management practices, for example, the North Yorkshire Local Enterprise Partnership (LEP)’s Circular Yorkshire food waste reduction project.
Councils also work with communities to promote changes in farming practices and eating habits to reduce food waste. Waste reduction apps such as Too Good to Go can be used to dramatically reduce business food waste, while providing affordable food to residents.
Councils also provide support for people to plan health meals and reduce food waste in the process.
Contact
Elliot Gregory
Public Affairs and Campaigns Advisor
Phone: 020 7664 3059
Mobile: 07766252833
Email: [email protected]