Wiltshire bids for Pickles Rubbish cash

On 3 February Communities and Local Government Minister Eric Pickles invited councils to bid for money from a fund allocated to support weekly waste collections. The scheme is worth up to £250 million. Three types of waste collection are eligible for funding. They are

• weekly residual collection with some recycling collected weekly
• weekly residual collection
• fortnightly residual collection with weekly food waste collection

Wiltshire Council has submitted an expression of interest in the third option. This would involve a bid for a weekly food waste collection to 60,000 of Wiltshire's 200,000 households in four of the county's main towns. The service would divert over 1,200 tonnes of food waste each year from landfill. This would be in addition to the fortnightly collections of recycling and fortnightly collections of non-recycled waste.

The other two options would represent a step backwards and are not worthy of consideration.

The expression of interest is non-binding. DCLG will use the information given to assess and prepare for the volume and range of bids that the fund might receive. Successful bids will have to demonstrate that they deliver

• a weekly collection service for a minimum of five years
• value for money (in terms of cost effectiveness)
• environmental benefits

The submission date for outline bids is 11 May 2012 and for final bids is 17 August 2012. We await a response on whether Wiltshire Council is invited to submit an outline bid.