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When Hillingdon Council introduced its garden waste charge, residents were told it would help save money and protect services. The Council approved a £70 subscription charge for the 2025/26 financial year, aiming to contribute £2.5 million towards the Council’s budget savings.
Following the introduction of the charge, we asked the Council for waste tonnage data, subscription figures, and information about enforcement. By combining this data with reports and budget documents, we now have a clearer picture of how the scheme is actually performing.
The figures show a clear change in residents’ behaviour: garden waste collected at the kerbside has fallen sharply, more garden waste is being taken to civic amenity sites, and residual black-bag waste has risen compared with the pre-charge average.
Visualising the impact: 1.2 million extra kilos in black bags
To compare like with like, we looked at the first comparable 30-week period after charging began, roughly July to late January. We compared the 2025/26 period against the average of the same 30 weeks across the previous three financial years.
Using this three-year average as the baseline, residual black-bag waste rose by approximately 1245 tonnes during the first 30 weeks of the new scheme.
That is 1245 tonnes (1,245,000 kilograms!). To put that into perspective, it is roughly equivalent to 83,000 standard 15kg bags of compost
At first glance, 1.2 million kilograms sounds almost unbelievable. But Hillingdon collected 32,831 tonnes of residual waste in the same period, so the increase is a 3.8% rise.
Put another way, using Hillingdon’s own waste figures, the increase is equivalent to adding around 12,000 extra Hillingdon residents’ worth of black-bag waste over the same 30-week period.