Rural areas of Northumberland to miss out on new kerbside food recycling service

Instead, only houses in the urban south east as well as towns including Morpeth and Ponteland will benefit.

Councillors have blamed a shortfall in the level of funding provided by central Government for a food waste service, which will become a statutory service from April.

Council leader Glen Sanderson said: “Recently the new Government have taken this up, but sadly we don’t have sufficient money to make this work across the whole of the county.

“We have been allocated £2.9m, but we are £1.5m short of what we need. What we are going to have to do is concentrate on the built-up areas where we can most efficiently pick up as much as we can.

“I know people will be disappointed with that. It is regrettable that the Government won’t fund this. We are lobbying Defra and we will continue to lobby as hard as we can.

“We want to be able to get to almost every home in the county. It is not a huge amount of extra money. We are ready to go – we just need the Government to dig into its pocket a little deeper.”

A report presented to cabinet members explained that the service would be rolled out in a phased approach.

The first phase would see collections from homes in the south east of the county as well as Morpeth and Ponteland.

This would leave an estimated £854,000 in “contingency”. After six months, any remaining contingency funding would be used to expand the area, although those new areas are “yet to be explored in detail”.

The collected food waste will be processed at anaerobic digestion facilities to generate renewable energy and a bio-fertiliser, which helps reduce carbon emissions while also improving soil health and fertility.

Cllr Colin Horncastle added: “The Defra funding formula doesn’t work. This was the only way to get the most houses covered.

“We can’t do the whole county. The easiest way to do it is to do it in the heavily populated south east. If more money is available, we can work it out from there.”

Cllr Sanderson has written to ministers calling for additional funding to help rollout the service.