A North Herts councillor has criticised the council for moving to three-weekly bin collections, saying that it leaves residents with a "worse" service and goes against draft statutory guidance.

Cllr Ralph Muncer, leader of the Conservative group, made the comments at a full council meeting last week.

He asked Cllr Daniel Allen, leader of the council, what legal advice the council had received on the decision to move to three-weekly collections.

The council has agreed that, from the end of the existing waste contract in 2025, general waste will be collected once every three weeks.

Last year, however, the Conservative government issued draft statutory guidance which would have required councils to collect general waste at least once every two weeks. It was not implemented before the general election led to a change of government.

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Cllr Allen said that the council had "received detailed legal advice from Sharpe Pritchard regarding the draft statutory guidance to support the councils decision-making progress".

The advice was presented to councillors in a part II report - meaning it was not publicly available - but Cllr Muncer said that he "sincerely hopes that that guidance is in fact going to be published to the public because ... this is a decision which impacts upon every single resident in North Hertfordshire".

He brought Cllr Allen's attention to the government's statutory guidance, asking: "Does the leader of the council agree that by implementing a three-weekly bin collection of residual waste, not only is this authority going against this statutory guidance and industry best practice, but that it will impose upon our residents a worse service compared to that which they currently receive?"

Cllr Allen responded: "The cabinet had regard of the draft statutory guidance ... and has taken that into account.

"The matters were set out in the part II report [and] we reconfirmed the decision on a three-weekly collection."