Dumfries and Galloway Council bin change costs £435,000 above forecast

The change to a new multi-bin collection scheme in one part of Dumfries and Galloway has cost £435,000 more than forecast.

The council introduced the service in Wigtownshire last year with a view to rolling it out to the whole region.

The need for additional staff and vehicles to cope with the change from a single bin system has cost nearly £500,000 more than first anticipated.

Additional income and grant funding helped to reduce the net overspend.

A report to councillors revealed the full scale of the cost implications of the change for the first time since the issue was flagged up in April.

The figures for 2014/15 were more than £400,000 higher than anticipated and an overspend of £300,000 is predicted in this financial year.

It has taken more than four months but a figure has finally been put on the extra costs of moving from single wheelie bin kerbside collections to multiple containers.

The scale of the overspend in 2014/15 alone has been, in the council's own words, "significant".

There was anecdotal evidence from the outset that the introduction of the system in Wigtownshire was not going smoothly.

Although there was public support for recycling, the implementation suffered serious teething troubles.

It now looks like there is plenty of work to be done before it can be extended to the rest of the region on a sustainable basis.

Money has been taken from the authority's budget pressures fund and Waste Private Finance Initiative "sinking fund" to cover these costs.

However, the council has been warned that approach would not be sustainable if the system was taken out across the region.

"There is no doubt that this whole exercise has been a significant learning curve for the service," added a report on the issue.

A string of potential changes will now be looked at in a bid to reduce the costs in consultation with Zero Waste Scotland.