RESIDENTS across Poole will lose their weekly rubbish collections from October as part of a fortnightly scheme council bosses say will claw back £500,000 a year.

Cash-strapped Borough of Poole (BOP) will start contacting residents by post this week to inform them of the alternate weekly waste collection service.

From October 3 all domestic households in Poole will have their black bin emptied one week, then their blue recycling bin emptied on the same day the following week.

This shake-up comes as a separate public consultation, launched yesterday, asks residents from Dorset’s nine council’s whether they should merge into just two single tier, all purpose authorities.

It is no secret that BOP and Bournemouth Borough Council’s relatively poor financial positions played a major part in the move to explore the ‘super council’ question.

On the new fortnightly black bin collections, BOP Cllr John Rampton, cabinet portfolio holder for environment and consumer protection, said: “This is about safeguarding the service, about creating a sustainable service - but it is driven mainly financially, it is a financial imperative.

“Council, back in February 2015, voted on this to basically save us money. Since then there has been a very open and democratic process.”

The switch from weekly to fortnightly bin collections will eventually contribute a saving of around £500,000 per year, head of environment and consumer protection services Shaun Robson told the Echo.

Mr Robson added: “The savings come because we will be using less vehicles and less trucks, as we will be collecting the black bins every other week to the blue bin. But as well as the savings, we want to make a shift towards trying to encourage people to recycle more.”

Poole now joins two-thirds of local authorities that operate two-weekly collections, which research has shown encourages higher recycling rates and reduces the amount of waste sent to expensive treatment facilities.

Each tonne of black bin waste costs BOP around £80 more to treat, compared to the equivalent weight of recycled waste.

Residents will continue to use their 240 litre blue bin and 180 litre black bin.

John Sprackling, of the Branksome Park, Canford Cliffs & District Residents Association, said: “We personally don’t have a problem with it because there’s only the two of us. We don’t put out our general waste bin every week anyway. But we live in a bungalow with a large garden, it not like the bins are just outside the back door.

“I can imagine if you live in a small flat or a bedsit, the bins can tend to stink after a week, especially in the summer. So I can understand some people not wanting to switch to a fortnightly collection.”

The only non collection will be Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year’s Day, rather than the whole week over the festive period, and there will be weekend working to catch up so no-one will miss a collection, the council says.

Visit poole.gov.uk/awc for further information.