RESIDENTS in Dwyfor and Meirionnydd may soon be forced to pay £33 a year to have their garden waste collected.

Gwynedd Council’s Communities Scrutiny Committee will on Thursday (19 May) discuss a review of the county’s garden waste collection that includes the possibility of introducing a fee for the fortnightly service.

The report that will be considered includes two possible options – collecting garden waste all year round for an annual fee of £33 or collecting nine months of the year with an annual fee of £30.

The additional fees were not included in the recent controversial ‘Challenge Gwynedd’ consultation which saw dozens of services cut across the county as the council attempted to make up for a £5million shortfall.

The council estimates that introducing the service would result in a reduction of approximately £750,000 in the amount of service cuts the authority would otherwise have to deliver.

Cllr John Wynn Jones, Gwynedd Council cabinet member for environment said: “If the proposal is approved, it is recommended that households would have the option of buying the service for a fee of between £30 and £33 a year.

“This would equate to somewhere between £1.30 and £1.67 per collection depending on whether a new service would be operational for nine months or 12 months of the year.”

The matter will be considered by the Council’s Communities Scrutiny Committee on 19 May.

Their recommendations will then be considered by the Council’s Cabinet for a final decision on 7 June.

If approved, it is expected that the change to the garden waste collection service would be introduced from January 2017 onwards, and arrangements would be made to raise awareness amongst the county’s residents about the new arrangements.