HANDS up who loves paying for having something taken away from you? Anyone? No, we thought not.

Well that is effectively what South Gloucestershire tax payers are now doing by funding the £649,000 it is costing to cut back the district’s waste collection services.

And this comes on top of the £36 they can choose to pay for their green waste to be collected in the first place.

Generally people don’t object to paying for something they are going to benefit from, whether it’s a utility bill, the police precept, their car MOT or an essential service.

But forking out more money, at a time when the country is only just recovering from the double dip recession, on something that will actually disadvantage residents is not going to prove popular.

The worse thing about this implementation cost is the way in which it was disguised in council papers in a convoluted table rather than featuring in a section titled ‘financial implications’ where most reasonable people would expect to find it.

Council officers cannot expect us to believe this wasn’t an intentional move on their part.

However, the cost is not the only false economy to come out of this move if recycling rates in the district go down rather than increase through the opt-in charge.

More than a quarter of respondents to a council survey on this issue have already admitted they will put their green waste in their green bin and no-one really knows how much garden waste that would previously have been composted will now be sent to landfill, which will end up costing the tax payer yet more money.