Cutting rubbish collections would be a ‘disaster’ with nappies left to pile and fester, a committee heard ahead of plans to introduce fortnightly pickups.

Sutton Council is set to end weekly bin collections, and hand the service over to Veolia, a waste management company, as it looks to slash £10.3m from its budget over the next eight years.

The policy would mean additional bags left next to, or on top of bins will not be collected and lids must be closed if residents want them to be emptied.

The Veolia-led scheme also came under fire when it was introduced in Croydon in 2015 and resulted in the company being fined thousands of pounds for repeatedly missing collections.

Veolia provides recycling and waste collection services across London including Kingston and Croydon. If the plans go ahead it will expand into Sutton in April. The company says it expects the new proposals will benefit Sutton by leading to a more recyclable-led service.

Speaking at the South Sutton, Cheam and Belmont local committee meeting on Thursday, January 5, resident Tom Bramble said: “You have a month to change the contract, can we look at that for a start. I know that a lot of families with young children, with babies in particular, are going to be worried about nappies.

“They fit into the general rubbish bin and that’s going to be collected fortnightly. That’s an absolute disaster for those families, that can’t work. I think there are families who are worried about this having spoken to them recently.”

Elsie Grace, project manager for Veolia, said: “What we want to do is have a more recycling-led service and what we’ve done is increase the capacity for each household by giving more recycling options, but we have reduced the number of collections to fortnightly. That’s not unusual in this day and age, that’s happening all over the country so it’s quite sound practice now.

“85 per cent of all people’s bin waste is recyclable, so there is no reason why we should not be able to fit that waste into the service we have proposed and it already works quite well in Croydon.

She added: “The last time I presented this people said to me about “I have heard about all the bad things that happened in Croydon”. Veolia did do that and it did not go 100 per cent according to plan.

“That was the first time it had not gone quite to plan, what I said to those people is as a result of that we have learned a lot of lessons and we won’t do things that we did do then.”

The proposed closed-lid collection service would provide:

• (Weekly) Small brown bin - cooked and uncooked food waste

• (Fortnightly) Green wheeled bin - paper and card

• (Fortnightly) Brown wheeled bin - non recyclable rubbish

• (Fortnightly) Green wheeled bin with brown lid - garden waste

• (Weekly) Recycling box - Tins, glass and plastics

People who want a larger bin for their waste can contact Veolia and fulfil certain criteria based on household size. No further details about the policy were given at the meeting.

Tony Shields, Conservative councillor for south Sutton, criticised Veolia’s closed bin plans and recommended the council withhold from signing the contract.

He said: “It is a closed bin policy? This is the first councillors have heard about this. It does lead us to a position, as this contract is not signed, and I think these are serious issues raised by residents that I move we do not sign this contract until these issues are ironed out.”

The committee agreed to discuss the policy further at the next meeting on Thursday, March 9.