Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, if he will increase funding to local authorities to help support the provision of food waste bins.

Following support at consultation, we will introduce a statutory duty for waste collection authorities to arrange for the separate collection of food waste from households, at least once a week. We are legislating for this through the Environment Bill.

The Government has committed to covering the costs of any additional burdens that local authorities face as a result of new statutory duties requiring them to collect food waste separately for recycling. This is in keeping with the New Burdens Doctrine which requires new burdens on local authorities to be properly assessed and fully funded, so that there will be no increase in council tax as a result of the policy.