THE introduction of a weekly food waste collection in Worcester is almost certain not to happen after the revelation that it would cost £633,000 a year to run.

The leader of the city council said it would have to fork out £288,000 to buy or lease vehicles to collect the sealed caddies, containing food waste, from every home in Worcester, while a further £345,000 would have to be spent on labour costs annually.

The council would also have to stump up an additional one-off £200,000 charge to install the sealed caddies in every home.

The figures announced by Coun Simon Geraghty at full council do not take into account the cost of disposing the waste.

It would appear the spiralling costs have all but put a stop to the idea of introducing the scheme because the cash-strapped city council is desperately trying to plug the gaping £1.6 million hole in its budget.

However, Worcester MP Mike Foster, a Labour whip whose group locally have pushed for weekly food waste collections, dismissed Coun Geraghty's numbers as "back of a fag packet calculations".

At this week's meeting Coun Geraghty said: "Clearly there is no budget provision for increasing this kind of service. We already have to make savings over the next few years so if we had to provide this we are looking at serious threat to other council services. It would be those non-statutory services - the community services, the arts and leisure - most at risk over such a scheme because we clearly have to pay for the statutory services.

"If the council decided to go down that path we will have to look very seriously at how we can achieve those savings on top of the savings we already have to make."

Speaking after the meeting, Mr Foster said: "Tax payers pay a landfill tax charge for all the food waste sent to landfill and that current policy is not acceptable. Food waste collection is the right way forward and quite frankly I give no credibility whatsoever to councillor Geraghty's numbers.

"They should be written off as fantasy and get this working party to meet and actually look at the issue in detail."

We reported in your Worcester News on Tuesday how a working party set-up to discuss wheelie bin collection services and the possibility of introducing weekly food waste collections to the city has still not met despite calls being made for the meeting to take place four months ago.

Mr Foster said Worcester City Council should have saved money from the introduction of fortnightly bin collections which could be put towards the cost of the weekly food waste collection service.