THE people of Worcester are not prepared to stump up extra cash to bring back weekly food waste collections, the city council has said.

A controversial £8,000 public consultation commissioned by Worcester City Council has also concluded people support the idea of installing a cafe in the city's historic Guildhall, and are prepared to pay an extra £2.50 above inflation on their annual council tax bills this year.

A total of 222 Worcester people took part in the survey, which was undertaken to find out which services the public see as priorities and how much they are prepared to pay for them, as the council sets its budget for the coming year.

When the consultation was announced in December, it was derided by opposition Labour councillors as a "sham" which would be used to justify council policy.

But Tory council leader Councillor Simon Geraghty said it had been "a hugely useful exercise". "We found very few people are willing to pay an extra premium for weekly food collection services," he said.

"This was a key question because there was quite a lot of concern when we went to alternate week collections last year."

Almost 80 per cent of those asked preferred to keep alternate collections than spend extra money - between £9 to £29 a year - on more collections.

The public's main priorities for improvements were a permanent flood defence at Hylton Road, a dedicated riverside litter-picking service at weekends and an extension to the planned riverside enhancement.

"We will be lobbying the Environment Agency about permanent defences and looking closely at our litter-picking plans," Coun Geraghty said. "Unfortunately we've had to abandon our aspiration to extend the riverside enhancement, but this shows how much support there is for the £1 million improvements we are going forward with."

Areas where savings were supported by the public included installing a cafe in the Guildhall, and merging museum and art services with Worcestershire County Council.

The survey concluded that people were prepared to pay an extra £2.50 above inflation on next year's council tax, rather than cut back on frontline services.

This finding was reflected almost exactly in the 4.34 per cent rise announced by the council last week.

"I think this shows that when people are faced with the choice of cutting services, they are prepared to pay a little more to preserve or enhance certain services," Coun Geraghty said.

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