"We will of course be monitoring the impact" – Telford & Wrekin council comments on Shropshire's plans for controversial recycling centre booking system

The Shropshire Council booking system comes into force at all five of its recycling centres on November 4.

Under the new system all Shropshire residents – those in both the Shropshire Council and Telford & Wrekin Council areas – will be able to use the centres, but they will need to reserve a slot.

Currently neighbouring Telford & Wrekin, which has two recycling centres in Halesfield and Hortonwood, does not require people to book before dropping waste off at the sites.

But the authority says it will be 'monitoring the impact' of the Shropshire Council booking plans, and could "review how we operate" the sites if its own residents become affected by the changes.

A spokeswoman for Telford & Wrekin said: “We have not made any changes to arrangements with accessing our household recycling centres but we continually review the way our all services operate to ensure we continue to deliver excellent services and provide quality community facilities to residents living in Telford and Wrekin.

"For this reason, we will of course be monitoring the impact of Shropshire Council’s plans to introduce a booking system to use their recycling centres.

"We have data informing us of the numbers of non-residents using the sites and we will continue to review how we operate our site if our own residents became affected in accessing the facilities."

Shropshire Council's changes to its centres at Bridgnorth, Craven Arms, Oswestry, Shrewsbury, and Whitchurch, come as the authority has also introduced a new charge for collecting residents' green waste bins.

The service requires an annual subscription fee of £56, but got off to a rocky start when the 'almost impossible to remove' stickers provided to subscribers for their bins started peeling off.

The council then ordered new stickers to replace them, which delayed the official start date for the scheme.