FORTNIGHTLY rubbish collections will be on the way if Malvern Hills District Council’s latest plans get the go-ahead.

The service would see rubbish collected one week and recycling the next, with residents issued with black wheelie bins.

Currently rubbish is collected every week and recycling every fortnight.

It is a u-turn by the ruling Tory group which pledged at the last election that preserving the weekly collection was a political priority for them.

The proposal comes after plans to establish a joint service with Wychavon District Council fell through. The councils got three tenders from private companies, but all were more expensive than the existing in-house service.

But with Malvern Hills needing to plug a £1.8 million gap in its budget because of government funding cuts, it still needs to find savings of £250,000 from its waste and recycling service.

On Tuesday, February 14, the council's executive committee is being recommended to approve the proposal, to be introduced in April 2018. If approved, it will then go before the full council on Tuesday, February 21.

Cllr Bronwen Behan, the council's environmental portfolio holder, said: “This council already operates a very efficient and cost-effective waste collection service that the private sector is unable to match and our staff should be congratulated on that.

“We are now faced with a very difficult decision. Do we make a small adjustment to the way we collect waste and recycling in order to balance the books or do we make significant cuts to all our services in order to maintain weekly collections?

“We’ve made no decision about that yet and we’ll take the time we have to study all the options and implications before agreeing a way forward.”

At a meeting of the council's overview and scrutiny committee this week, Cllr Mick Davies said: "We're intending to implement this for April 2018, so I'm puzzled why we have to make a decision in the next three weeks. Surely it would be better to understand the details of the savings before we make that decision."

The council's head of economy Phil Merrick said: "We have got to get this absolutely right and that takes time."

Cllr Hannah Campbell asked: "If we're keeping the service in-house, what are we going to do about the high level in agency staff that we have been employing?"

Mr Merrick said: "Once we know what the system is, we will know what level of staffing we need and there will be less reliance on agency staff."