WHEELIE bins are set to come to Malvern after councillors reluctantly backed fortnightly collections.

Malvern Hills district councillors backed the introduction of the controversial bins for recycling at a meeting on Tuesday after saying their hands were tied because they needed to apply for Government funding by Friday.

Previous attempts to introduce the bins have been highly unpopular, with opponents saying they are visually inappropriate, unsuitable for many homes and not wanted by much of the public.

Council leader Coun David Hughes told members the council was obliged to introduce glass collection by 2015 and therefore needed to introduce wheelie bins.

This, combined with reductions in council grants from central government, jeopardises the current two-bag weekly collection.

After considering alternatives, such as glass collection boxes, council officers recommended the best way to safeguard the weekly black bag collection was to introduce a fortnightly collection of recycled waste using wheelie bins.

He said there was a “very real danger” that if the bid was not made, the council would end up losing its weekly black bag collection because without the funding they would have to cut back to a fortnightly system.

Councillors voted 21-8 with one abstention to approve the scheme, although few seemed enthusiastic.

Coun Graham Myatt said: “We’re between a rock and a hard place, but there is money on offer from the government, and better that it comes here than somewhere else.”

Coun Anthony Warburton warned that far from safeguarding the weekly collection, the proposal would endanger it, saying that in a few years, the council would be pressured for “the abandonment of the black sack system and residual waste would then be collected using the already-installed wheeled bin system on a fortnightly basis”.

Members approved a bid for £1.54 million from the government’s Weekly Collection Support Scheme for the project.

The council is expecting to hear about this in October.