A councillor has raised fears of a spike in fly-tipping as commercial costs for household recycling centres increase across the district.
Newry, Mourne and Down District Council’s (NMDDC) environment committee this week approved the rise in its waste management scale prices across the board by 6%.
Alliance rep, Jill Truesdale said: “With any increase in charges, I feel that you will probably see an increase in illegal dumping and fly-tipping.
“So, what are the council’s plans to off-set that side of things?
“Also, about encouraging the use of blue bins (recycling), the council used to do a reward once a month programme for the best blue bin recycler.
“It was a very good positive re-enforcement to get people to recycle properly into their blue bins. Any plans to bring that back?”
According to the local authority’s website, it spent approximately £2million keeping streets and roads clean in the district last year.
The new charges for ratepayers also includes replacement bins and the collection cost of bulky household waste from homes.
In a recent Freedom of Information request, the Local Democracy Reporting Service found that NMDDC had identified 647 bins ‘lost to lorry’ in one financial year (April 2021- March 2022).
However, any cost of the replacement by the council was kept confidential, despite costs to ratepayers now rising.
A council officer responded: “Council waste strategy seeks to encourage recycling and minimisation of black bin wastes.
“Charges for collection and disposal of non-recycling wastes are notably higher.
“The current charging structure has been reviewed and a 6% increase has been applied for 2024/25.”
The officer added: “In relation to fly-tipping the council would continue in terms of enforcement action with the enforcement team.
“We are working on an enforcement improvement strategy and that will be encompassing all areas of enforcement.
“The awards scheme, is something that we will be looking at again to introduce.”
