SCOTTISH Borders Council has “a problem with competency” according to the man who led an unsuccessful campaign to reinstate garden waste collections.

Retired senior police officer and former councillor Andrew Farquhar was commenting after SBC’s executive was presented this week with a list of startling statistics resulting from the decision to axe the green bin service for 38,000 households on April 1.

The data, which has come too late for the 8,000 Borderers who supported Mr Farquhar’s reinstatement petition, revealed a surge in the amount of waste going to the Easter Langlee tip and a resultant sharp hike in the amount of landfill tax being paid to the Scottish Government.

In addition, the council’s recycling performance has plummeted.

“To say the decision to scrap garden waste collections has been a false economy is indeed an understatement,” said Mr Farquhar.

The council’s executive heard that in the first quarter of 2014/15 (April 1 – June 30), the percentage of household waste being recycled in the region fell from 44.44% in the corresponding period last year to just 34.52%.

Over the same period, the volume of waste which went to landfill shot up by 12% - from 7,281 tonnes to 8,152 tonnes. And the cost of landfilling this waste was £652,160 – an increase of £137,955 or 26.32% on the £524,205 paid in the corresponding quarter of last year.

In his performance report, SBC’s waste manager Ross Sharp-Dent repeatedly cited “the removal of the garden waste collection” as a reason for the trends.

Outlining “actions to improve or maintain performance”, he said a new community recycling centre in Kelso was due to open in the spring of 2015, others would be upgraded and a new integrated waste treatment facility at Easter Langlee (not due to open until at least 2017), would “capture recyclates previously destined for landfill”.

Mr Sharp-Dent also noted that a statutory food waste collection service would be introduced next summer for 24,000 households in Galashiels, Tweedbank, Selkirk, Jedburgh, Hawick and Peebles.

As previously reported in these columns, a bid by the council to defray the £629,000 cost of starting up this new service was submitted too late to access funding from Zero Waste Scotland.

Mr Farquhar said that if the extra quarterly costs of landfill were extrapolated across 12 months the annual spend would be in excess of £550,000.

“That is more than councillors were told would be saved when they decided to axe the green bins,” he claimed.

Having allowed Mr Farquhar to present his case to the petitions committee, the council finally endorsed its decision to scrap the garden waste service on October 30, a motion from leader David Parker conceding that consultation with the Borders public “could have been more carefully and effectively implemented” and “regretting any inconvenience and disturbance this may have caused”.

Mr Farquhar told the Peeblesshire News: “I suppose history was created when the council apologised for this fiasco but the outcome, as revealed in this week’s figures, was something that surely could have been predicted.

“This is worrying considering the proposals the council is coming up with for delivering key services, like home care for our most vulnerable citizens, in the future.

“I think SBC has a problem with competency.”