FLINTSHIRE Council will continue to charge for garden waste collection.

At its recent meeting, the council’s cabinet agreed to continue the controversial charging policy for garden waste and the current cost of £30 per bin will be frozen for 2019.

The new charges were introduced in April 2018 to help the council ensure this discretionary service achieved full cost recovery.

In the first year of the subscription process, 33,871 permits were sold which means over 40 per cent of all residents and more than half of those who used the service in previous years have subscribed for at least one bin to be collected under the new service.

For those residents who want a kerbside collection service, subscriptions are open from 30 January.

All residents will need to subscribe or re-subscribe if they want to continue collections of garden waste from March 1 this year.

Subscriptions can be online, by phone 01352 701234 or at any Connects office.

Collections will start from March 1 and have been extended to include any late leaf fall until December 1.