Government funding to help Chichester District Council start up a food waste collection service has fallen far short of what is needed.
During a meeting of the cabinet on Tuesday (February 6), members were told that the money provided to help the council buy vehicles and equipment was £665,683 – 33 per cent – too low.
And, while the funding to pay for things such as staffing, route planning and digital infrastructure changes has yet to be confirmed, a further shortfall of £690,000 is expected.
The council has challenged the government over the funding – but these things are never resolved quickly.
And, with councils being told they have to bring food waste collections online by March 2026, contingencies have had to be put in place.
The cabinet recommended that £1,355,683 be taken from the General Fund reserves to cover the shortfall.
Should that shortfall prove to be not as bad as expected, the money will be returned to the reserve.
With only two years to get things up and running – a deadline described as ‘incredibly tight’ by deputy leader Jonathan Brown (below) – priority has been given to the design of the service and buying the necessary vehicles and containers.
The aim is to buy diesel vehicles, even though that will lead to a net increase in the council’s carbon emissions.
Mr Brown said that, despite this, there will be a decrease in the local government area because of the decrease in food waste.
He added:
“Going electric would create a much larger funding gap.
“We are further ahead than many councils in that we do already operate two large electric waste collection vehicles.
“Unfortunately our experience has been that they haven’t been reliable.
“We’ve got two different models that we’ve been trialling and, based on our experience so far, we have to conclude that with the available technology we could not meet our statutory requirements by procuring an electric fleet of new food waste collection vehicles.
“Furthermore, we don’t have sufficient charging capacity at our depot to be able to operate many more vehicles than we’re currently doing.”
Mr Brown said that a review of the depot site would be carried out, with part of it focussing on increasing its electric charging capacity.
Even if that were possible, though, the necessary upgrades would not be carried out in time for the council to buy an electric fleet for food waste.
He added:
“It’s a real tragedy of the timing. We’ve waited ages for the government to tell us what will be required and when – and now they finally have, they haven’t given us sufficient time to implement in a sustainable way.
“Nor given us enough lead-in time for the market to develop reliable electric vehicles.”
The cabinet’s recommendations will be put to a meeting of the full council for final approval on February 27.
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