Town Hall plans ‘big discussions’ over coming years to address recycling rate

Hackney Council are planning to task a specific group with responsibility for looking at issues surrounding recycling in the borough.

The upcoming Scrutiny Task Group on the North London Waste Authority (NLWA) and Recycling & Waste will be asked by Hackney Mayor Philip Glanville (Lab & Co-op) to have “big discussions” around the topic.

The NLWA charges Hackney a levy of around £7m a year to dispose of the waste of its residents and businesses, but that could increase to £12m over the next seven years to finance the replacement of its ageing infrastructure in Edmonton.

Glanville said: “There’s a big section in the budget about the rising levy and the impact that could have on our long-term finances.

“What we want to do with the scrutiny panel is have some of those big discussions about looking at where we are, thinking about what our ambitions are for increasing recycling, and looking at the impact of the levy.

“One of the challenging things is that Hackney has not got an easy housing typology. We have lots of flats, and if you live in a flat you don’t have the ability to have four different wheelie bins, you simply don’t.”

The borough celebrated its highest-ever recycling rate which peaked at 30.21 per cent in the final quarter of 2016/17.

Latest figures show a dip from this high water mark back down to 27.5 per cent for the final quarter of 2017/18.