Aberdeen budget: Relief for residents as £30 brown bin ‘garden tax’ AXED

The unpopular levy has been axed amid fears it could have been raised to £50.

By Chris Cromar

March 6 2024, 2:11 pm

The £30 fee to collect garden waste brown bins will be scrapped later this year. Image: Kath Flannery/DC Thomson.

Aberdeen’s unpopular “garden tax” has been scrapped – with brown bin waste to be collected for free by the end of the year.

The charge, which stands at £30 per year and was introduced in 2019, was abolished during today’s council budget talks.

This came despite Aberdeen City Council officials suggesting that increasing the permit to £50 annually would bring in £376,000 to the city’s coffers over the next year.

But the SNP/Liberal Democrat coalition instead opted to remove it altogether.

Councillor Alex McLellan and council colleagues during Aberdeen budget talks. — SNP finance convener Alex McLellan made the announcement at today’s council budget. Image: Kath Flannery/DC Thomson.

Aberdeen brown bin permit axed

Announcing the move, SNP finance convener Alex McLellan said: “We want to ensure households can dispose of their garden waste, with their food waste, as it is a positive for the environment.”

The announcement will come as a relief to the council’s Liberal Democrat group, who have been in administration with the SNP since the the local elections in May 2022.

The Liberal Democrats have opposed the charge since its introduction five years ago, with the local group describing it as an “unjustifiable cash-grab”.

Newspaper clipping about garden waste scheme. — Councillor Ian Yuill has been campaigning for the charge to be scrapped for years. Image: Clarke Cooper/DC Thomson.

At the council elections in 2022, it was a key policy in the party’s manifesto and the “commitment” to “repeal the unfair garden tax charge” was included in their power-sharing agreement with the SNP.

But at last year’s budget, the city’s four Liberal Democrat councillors controversially voted to maintain the £30 charge for the waste collection.

However, group leader and council co-leader Ian Yuill has now confirmed it will be binned as of September.

‘We said we would and we have’

Councillor Yuill added: “We said we would, and we have.”

Despite its apparent unpopularity, which sees households receive tamper-proof permit stickers for their brown bins, it has still been taken up by thousands of households across the city.

By 2021, 35,000 households had signed up to the scheme, which generated £900,000 for council finances.

Councillor Steve Delaney standing beside a brown garden waste bin. — Councillor Steve Delaney has never paid the garden waste fee. Image: Kath Flannery/DC Thomson.

Despite being accused of “complete hypocrisy” for backing the charges at last year’s budget, Liberal Democrat councillor and deputy lord provost Steve Delaney said his group remained committed to the policy.

Councillor Delaney, who pledged never to pay the Aberdeen brown bin permit “on a point of principle”, told The P&J last year that he hoped to be able to ultimately axe it.

Read more on the budget meeting: