WHAT would you think about being charged £1 every time you wanted to do your recycling?

One West Oxfordshire District councillor believes this could be the answer to the county council’s budget problems.

Local authority cuts mean recycling centres in the county could be reduced from seven to three or four and opening times shortened in a bid to save an estimated £350,000 by 2017/18.

Dix Pit at Stanton Harcourt is one of the centres under threat and West Oxfordshire District councillor Colin Dingwall suggested charging people £1 per drop-off in a bid to reduce the financial shortfall.

He told a district council cabinet meeting: “Oxfordshire County Council should be going back to the government and saying ‘this is not right’.

“If you charged £1 to get into Dix Pit that would alone find the £350,000.”

The county council, which runs seven household waste recycling centres at an annual cost of £1.2m, said it was illegal for them to charge people to recycle, but Crawley resident Mr Dingwall was undeterred. He said: “£350,000 is not a huge amount of money in the scheme of things.

“They are not allowed to charge people to recycle, as they have to encourage people to recycle, but they could look at charging £1 for a pair of gloves for instance, so that people don’t get their hands filthy.

“Or perhaps £1 for a disinfecting wheel wash. There must be something they can charge for to keep the site open.

“Members of staff at Dix Pit have even asked people coming in to the recycling centre about this. And no one has said they would object to a small charge.

“It would not be a weekly thing. It’s only as and when they need it. With the volume of people that go down there, they could easily raise the money.”

Mr Dingwall, councillor for Long Hanborough and Freeland, added: “We’ve obviously got to live within our means and budgets but we need a bit of lateral thinking.”

However, Oxfordshire County Council has said it would be against the law to carry out this kind of idea, as local authorities are not allowed to charge residents to use places where they can deposit household waste.

Spokesman Paul Smith said: “The government does not allow it. If the idea with charging for gloves went ahead, they would sense it was a ruse.”

Keen recycler David Newman, from Oxford, said about the cost-saving plans: “ What puts me off is not the idea of charges but getting there if you don’t have a car, as well as the opening hours changing.”