By Stuart Sommerville

Copyright dailyrecord

West Lothian councillors have called for more clarity on when brown bin charges could be scrapped for residents. When West Lothian first introduced a £50 a year charge to uplift garden waste last summer, householders were told that Holyrood would eventually pick up the costs through increased grant aid to councils. More than a year later however, council waste managers told Conservative councillor Alison Adamson that they have heard nothing about plans to make garden rubbish uplift a statutory service- and potentially free to households. And the Local Democracy Reporting Service can reveal it will be at least another year before a change is even considered by the Scottish Government. A report on the year’s performance of waste management service went before the Environment and Sustainability PDSP this week which revealed a 4% increase in garden waste collected at the kerbside in 2024. Councillor Adamson said: “I’m delighted to see there has been a 4.1% increase in the co-mingled food and garden waste collection but my question is are we any further forward in having funding given by the Scottish Government to help reduce the need for having to pay for permits for brown bins? David Maule, Head of Operational Services told the meeting: “I can confirm there has been no confirmation from the Scottish Government.” West Lothian’s annual garden waste uplift permits now cost £52.75 per household. This covers two brown bins. When the permits were first proposed in February 2024 they caused uproar. Petitions against the charge were started when it was revealed that the charges could raise more than £1m a year. However, unions representing Waste Operations staff welcomed the charge as the first significant investment in the service after almost two decades of cutbacks. At the moment there’s no requirement to provide the garden waste uplift so councils receive no financial help to do so and the charges have been introduced to cover the extra costs. Many more councils have since followed West Lothian in the last year- including neighbouring Falkirk and South Lanarkshire- and introduced an annual cost to collect garden waste in the belief that when such a service becomes statutory the councils will have those costs covered by Scottish Government funding for services. Damian Doran-Timson, the Conservative group leader on the council, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “We only agreed to this fee on the understanding it would become mandatory from the Scottish Government and therefore the charge for the brown bin uplift would have been removed. “We expected this to have happened by now, but the residents of West Lothian are yet again being negatively impacted by the incompetence of the Scottish Government. “I believe an incoming ‘government’ should make garden waste collection statutory and therefore not chargeable”. A spokesperson for the Scottish Government told the LDRS: “We are reviewing local authority charges for waste collection services as part of the co-design of the new statutory household recycling Code of Practice, though no decisions on changes to duties relating to garden waste collection have been reached. “The co-design will be completed by the end of 2026, after which the Code of Practice will be consulted on.” Don’t miss the latest news from the West Lothian Courier. Sign up to our free newsletter here .