A free pop-up waste collection is set to be scrapped by the council to save money.

Worcester City Council has revealed that it plans to ditch the popular Saturday Skip service from next year to ease its future budget woes.

Binning the collections would save around £50,000 a year from 2024/25, the city council said.

The skips, which are dotted around a handful of locations across the city, were re-introduced in 2021 and provide a free local drop-off point for residents who are unable to take bulky household waste items to the city’s recycling centres. 

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The council currently places skips at Weir Lane in Lower Wick, Waverly Street near Cherry Orchard Nature Reserve, Shap Drive, Tolladine Road, the KGV Playing Fields in Brickfields Road and Dines Green Community Centre.

The council then sends two bin lorries week-by-week to the different sites.

The yearly cost of running the service totals £50,000 with the council saying the bulk of the money goes to paying overtime to staff as none of the council’s waste or recycling workers are contracted to work weekends for the skip service.

The council also said the free skip service clashes with its charges for collecting bulky waste such as washing machines, fridges, televisions, mattresses and rolls of carpet with charges ranging from £11.20 to £21.50 depending on what is collected.

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Many of the skips are placed in areas of the city where housing associations should be collecting rubbish and footing the bill, the council said, and it was taking on “additional and unnecessary costs” by continuing the service.

The council has warned of job losses and further cuts to services with a worrying gap in the authority’s budget expected to rise to at least £4m in the next five years.

Cuts of between eight and 10 per cent are predicted to be needed to bring Worcester City Council’s spending in line with income and it said it will look at outsourcing services and turning to sponsors, volunteers and other community organisations to run some of its activities.

Council bosses are already discussing cuts to departmental budgets and alongside potential job losses have re-opened the voluntary redundancy scheme to try and save as much money as possible.

The council warns that already squeezed services will be cut to the bone with only the amenities the authority has to do by law spared from the chop.