Garden Waste Collection in Cheshire West & Chester

Garden waste collection, in Cheshire West and Chester, is an opt-in chargeable service. It costs £50 per bin, per calendar year, regardless of when you subscribe during the year.

This charge is not included or added to your council tax bill.

Residents have a choice to use the service or make alternative arrangements such as composting at home or taking their waste to the nearest recycling centre. 

If you are in receipt of full council tax reduction at the point of applying for your annual permit, you are entitled to a £10 reduction on the cost of one garden waste bin permit. 

Your eligibility is assessed at the point of application only. If during the subscription year your eligibility changes and you become entitled to a reduction, you will not be offered a refund for monies already paid.

The service will provide fortnightly collections over 40 weeks of the year with a suspension outside of growing season of 12 weeks (December to February).

Garden waste bins will not be emptied without a valid subscription and displayed permit. Collections in 2024 will take place between Monday 26 February 2024 and Friday 29 November 2024.

The best time to sign up for the service is in January to ensure you receive all 20 collections during the calendar year.

You can subscribe for as many bins as you need.

Please check your collection calendar to confirm when your garden waste is collected.

We will make every effort for garden waste collections to be on the same day as household recycling collections. However, please note that this cannot be guaranteed.

Garden waste collections may be any day of the week, Monday to Friday. If this is the case you will be notified by us.

Following no increase in charge last year, the cost of a subscription for this year has increased to £50 per bin.

The new price reflects the increased cost of the delivering the service we have experienced since the charge was set two years ago – especially the impacts of inflation.

We face significant financial pressures. It is therefore essential that we look to alternative sources of income to prioritise core Council funding to protect essential frontline services.

The collection of garden waste is not a core service that councils are required to provide and more than 65% of local authorities across England charge for this service. The service is only paid for by the people who wish to use it.

Your service will start on the first collection day after you have received your permit and stuck it to your bin. It can take up to ten working days for your permit to arrive following payment.

Please note: refunds will only be provided if you cancel your subscription within 14 days of signing up.

We are unable to accommodate 'on demand' collections. Residents who subscribe to the service will pay the full fee per bin regardless of how many times the bin is presented for collection.

You should continue to use your current garden bin.

If your property has space, you should retain your garden bin, even if you choose not to subscribe to the service as the bin belongs to the property. However, if you feel that you do not have space to store the bin and are confident you will not wish to subscribe to the service in the future, you can request for your garden bin to be removed.

Some residents have garden waste bags instead of bins. If this applies to you, collections will still need to be subscribed for.

Each subscription will provide collections for four garden waste bags, one permit will be issued which needs to be fixed to one of the bags that you put out for emptying. Garden waste bags are not offered as an alternative to the bin service.