How we work out bin collection value for money
The short version: we compare your council with similar English councils. We use official figures for spending, rubbish and recycling. Then we turn that comparison into a score out of 10.
What does the score mean?
Ten means a council is in the highest tenth of the councils we can rate. One means it is in the lowest tenth. A higher score means the council did better on our particular mix of cost, the amount of rubbish left after recycling, and the recycling rate.
We call it “value for money” because cost counts most. But cheap is not enough. We also give weight to how much rubbish is left and how much is recycled.
This is a comparison, not a verdict. It cannot tell you why a council got its score. Nor can it tell you how much money that council could save.
What figures do we use?
- Money: the government’s Revenue Outturn data for household waste collection and recycling. We add those two figures together. This is a useful guide to the cost of the bin and recycling service, but it is not a pure measure of lorries and crews.
- Rubbish and recycling: Defra’s local-authority waste statistics. We use rubbish left per household after recycling, and the percentage sent for reuse, recycling or composting.
- The place: ONS figures for population density, population, median weekly pay and children in relative poverty before housing costs.
The current rating uses three financial years: 2022–23, 2023–24 and 2024–25. We do not guess missing figures.
Why not compare every council with every other council?
Collecting bins in a crowded city is different from collecting them across a large rural area. Population density matters. So do the size and circumstances of the local population.
There is another important difference. Some councils only collect waste. Others are also responsible for disposing of it. Collection-only councils are compared only with other collection authorities. Councils with unitary waste responsibilities are compared only with other unitary authorities.
For each council, we find the 20 closest councils of the same type. The council itself is never one of its own peers. Population density counts most when we find those peers. Population, median pay and child poverty count too.
This helps. It does not make the places identical. Islands, road layouts, tourism, blocks of flats, communal bins and different collection schemes can still change the cost.
How does that become a score out of 10?
- For each year, we compare the council’s cost per estimated household, rubbish per household and recycling rate with the median — the middle point — for its available peers.
- We take the median result across the years available. When there are two years, that is halfway between the two results.
- We combine the three results: 60% spending, 25% residual waste and 15% recycling.
- We rank the councils that have passed all the checks, then split that ranking into ten bands.
That is the 1–10 score. It is a peer-relative indicator, not a target, league-table inspection or promise about the service you will receive.
Why might a council have no score?
We would rather show nothing than show a doubtful score. We leave a council out if its data is missing, stale or from incompatible periods; if it has too few valid peers; if its official GSS code cannot be mapped safely; or if the published waste figures describe a joint service rather than one council. A missing rating does not mean poor performance.
A limited-confidence score has still passed our minimum checks. But it has only two complete years, fewer peers in an annual comparison, or a less convincing match with its twentieth peer. We put “Limited confidence” next to that score.
What is missing?
The score does not include missed collections, complaints, assisted collections or resident satisfaction. There is no consistent national council-level dataset for them. Different accounting choices, income, recycling credits and collection schemes can affect the figures too.
Check our work
The current release stops displaying automatically after 30 April 2027 unless we refresh the official data and review the method. The calculation is deterministic: the same pinned source figures and method produce the same result. If the data file is invalid or incomplete, the site rejects all of it.
You can read the full technical method, source tables and audit notes. The source datasets are published under the Open Government Licence 3.0.