Warwick District Council is being asked to check its homework amid concern over dropping uptake and price hikes for green waste collections.

As part of its fees and charges review for the 2026-27 budget, the authority is planning to put up the price of a green bin permit from £47 to £51 – a little more than 8.5 per cent. 

The council's report details how it expected to sell 40,000 per year but has had to revise its figures having fallen short by 2,000 customers.

It says the decline "reflects local trends and may be due to the unusually dry spring and summer" but still tweaked next year's projected income accordingly, shaving off £186,500.

The lowered £1.963 million target is still slightly more than the £1.88 million the council projects to bring in across 2025-26 but councillors last week questioned how the assumptions had been reached.

Chair of the district's scrutiny panel Cllr Andrew Milton said: "We are concerned about the impact of the declining numbers on the finances.

"We also emphasise the importance of understanding the reasons for customer behaviour and the data behind it to allow for the correct decisions to be made.

"A number of us were slightly concerned about the assumption that it being hot had reduced the number of permits sold. Perhaps that was jumping to a conclusion that didn't necessarily correlate with the information.

"We should have information by now on whether we are losing registrations from people with multiple bins who are reducing, or whether it is people going from one to zero."

Portfolio holder for resources Cllr Jonathan Chilvers replied: "We had a long conversation at scrutiny about what data was available and what more we could get hold of. 

"We are only a few years in and it is very difficult to disentangle the various reasons why things might be happening."

The council is also looking into the prospect of an additional green bag service which "may help to increase participation in the garden waste scheme". Cllr Chilvers acknowledged "they need to be priced and worked in a way to get the incentive right between getting a bag or a bin", anticipating more information towards the end of the next financial year.

Representatives of other parties expressed concern over pricing but Cllr Chilvers argued the Green-Labour coalition was striking the right balance and had reduced the additional rise in the council's expected overall income from 10 per cent when they took office to three per cent now.

"We have gone back and looked at that and managed to keep things apart from green bins and parking down to a predicted rise of three per cent," he said.

"The green bin rise has been kept within that 10 per cent and we will continue to try to work out ways of keeping those rises as low as possible.

"None of us came into politics to put up prices but we also recognise that without a price, there just wouldn't be a service. We want to provide a good service and to do it with good financial prudence."