Sports clubs and community centres will be forced to pay for their rubbish to be collected after council chiefs agreed to scrap free collections.

Last night, Three Rivers District Council’s policy and resources committee agreed to scrap free recycling collections for community centres and sports clubs in the district.

This now means these groups could be forced to start paying for their recycling collection service from Thursday, October 1.

The authority said it would lose around £25,000 if it were to extend free recycling collections to all charitable organisations in the district.

Thirteen sports clubs and community centres are set to be affected. 

Councillor Ann Shaw, leader of Three Rivers District Council, said: “It is quite clear, if these community centres concentrate on recycling everything they can, that will reduce the cost to them of this and this is something we need to encourage.

“It would also save them some of the extra costs if we could get them some extra information.”

Council documents stated: “Although this will be an additional cost, the cost of recycling collections, including food are 50 per cent lower than residual waste.

“These groups can be encouraged to completely minimize their residual waste bins and only have recycling facilities in place, which will keep their costs to a minimum.”

Councillor Matthew Bedford, lead member for resources at the authority, added: “It also be useful for us to have a leaflet to hand out to people in community associations because they need to understand there is a real cost to the council.

“We can’t just, as they would see it, come along and collect sacks of rubbish. Actually doing this has a significant cost and the disposal cost is quite substantial.”