I SEE from the Forest of Dean District Council's website that the cabinet "agreed to introduce a weekly opt-in chargeable garden waste collection service, in line with other Gloucestershire councils." I guess that page must be out of date, however, as on another page of the same website, entitled "2012 – New collection services" it states that "The current fortnightly garden waste service will change to an opt-in charged for service, with collections continuing fortnightly." Website update required?

One of the excuses made for introducing this charge is "ensuring that only those residents who use the service pay for it." Can Forest of Dean District Council not understand that the whole idea of a council tax is that it should be a simple and efficient method of collecting, in one fell swoop, a whole load of what would otherwise be an unmanageable melange of smaller charges for a broad range of community services? Charging for individual services is entirely contrary to this principle and Forest of Dean District Council are wrong to go down this road. A local authority should be a community enterprise, operating on behalf of the community to provide central services for the community, these services being financed by the community through council tax. What next? Perhaps residents might be invoiced separately for pavement sweeping, for the running and maintenance costs of the street lights outside their property, and so on.

A garden waste collection service helps Forest of Dean District Council achieve targets under waste and recycling legislation imposed by EEC environmental directives and provides important benefits to the whole community, not just to those who need to use the service for disposal of their garden waste. Charging for the service encourages people to go back to burning their garden refuse in smelly bonfires and/or inefficiently transporting it themselves to Forest of Dean District Council's local facilities, or, worse, transporting it to fly tipping sites in woodland, etc. There will also be many more garden rubbish heaps forming convenient homes for vermin.

Also, those opting for the service may well be tempted to reduce the volume of their debris by shredding it, again unnecessarily using energy, this time in the form of mains electricity or petrol, depending on how their shredding equipment is powered. Furthermore, significant numbers of residents may opt to replace hedges with fencing and grass with gravel, in order to reduce their output of green waste to manageable (or affordable) proportions – again not environmentally friendly options.

The projected saving from this retrograde step by Forest of Dean District Council is unclear, but whatever it is, it will not mean a reduction in council tax bills as "any savings will be used to invest in other areas of the service ..." Of course, your collected garden waste will be composted commercially, but if you want the resultant soil improver, you will need to purchase it from the Household Recycling Centre in Broadwell – so you pay them to take it away, and you pay them to get it back! (A good argument for home composting, but only if you actually need the compost or can find a home for it).

Looking at value for money aspects, it is interesting to compare the Forest of Dean District Council's offering against that of neighbouring Monmouthshire County Council (which, admittedly, is in Wales, not England). It would seem that for £26, Forest of Dean District Council will collect one wheeled bin of garden waste per fortnight, excluding Christmas and New Year weeks.

Monmouthshire County Council's service, which is included in the council tax, collects up to five large, reusable bags of garden waste per household every week of the year. As each bag holds around 80 litres, that's potentially about 400 litres per week. I do not know the capacity of the Forest of Dean District Council wheeled bin, but typical "wheelie bins" hold 120 to 360 litres, with 240 litres being the most common. On this basis it looks as if Forest of Dean residents would need to buy several £26 licences to have the same potential level of collection as is available "free" to Monmouthshire residents.

Yes, Forest of Dean District Council has managed to "freeze" council tax – if you don't count the cost of garden waste collection licences and the potential cost of the proposed car parking charges, that is.

– Name and address supplied (Chepstow).