This is what the council spends on its waste service divided by the tonnes of waste it handles — the price of dealing with one tonne of rubbish and recycling. It is the headline value-for-money measure for waste: a low number suggests an efficient operation, while a high one can point to costly contracts, expensive disposal routes, or lots of spend for relatively little waste. Because different types of council do different parts of the job (some only collect, some only dispose), it should only be compared between councils of the same type.
| Council | Class | Value | In its class |
|---|---|---|---|
| City of London | london | 1,105 | 1st worst of 33 |
| Council of the Isles of Scilly | unitary | 559 | 1st worst of 61 |
| Westmorland and Furness Council | unitary | 308.89 | 2nd worst of 61 |
| Hammersmith and Fulham LB | london | 284.29 | 2nd worst of 33 |
| Royal Borough of Kensington and Chelsea | london | 263.49 | 3rd worst of 33 |
| Cornwall | unitary | 253.76 | 3rd worst of 61 |
| West Berkshire District Council | unitary | 251.68 | 4th worst of 61 |
| Tower Hamlets LB | london | 251.51 | 4th worst of 33 |
| Wakefield City MDC | metropolitan | 247.04 | 1st worst of 36 |
| Reading Borough Council | unitary | 239.71 | 5th worst of 61 |
| Council | Class | Value | In its class |
|---|---|---|---|
| Uttlesford District Council | district | 8.53 | 1st best of 161 |
| Gloucestershire County Council | county | 11.43 | 1st best of 21 |
| Brentwood Borough Council | district | 15.12 | 2nd best of 161 |
| Worthing Borough Council | district | 31.36 | 3rd best of 161 |
| Hart District Council | district | 33.93 | 4th best of 161 |
| Oadby and Wigston Borough Council | district | 34.29 | 5th best of 161 |
| Suffolk County Council | county | 35.07 | 2nd best of 21 |
| Havering LB | london | 36.65 | 1st best of 33 |
| Adur District Council | district | 39.35 | 6th best of 161 |
| North Norfolk District Council | district | 39.61 | 7th best of 161 |
| name | cost_per_tonne_gbp |
|---|---|
| dataset | 12-wastedataflow |
| kind | constructed |
| type | numeric |
| unit | GBP/tonne |
| grain | council-year |
| role | outcome |
| source | Formula: waste_spend_total_gbp / la_collected_waste_total_tonnes (Table_1, 2024-25 row); spend built from RO5 (../01-revenue-outturn/data/RO5_LA_Data_2024-25_data_by_LA.ods) joined on ONS Code |
| period | 2024-25 only |
| missingness | Compare only within authority type: collection authorities carry no disposal spend/tonnage and disposal authorities no collection, so cross-type comparisons are invalid. |
| score_note | Headline GBP/tonne efficiency measure; capped by 2024-25-only cross-dataset spend join. |
| calculated | ../calculated/cost-per-tonne-gbp.csv |
| calculated_rows | 317 |
| calculated_periods | 2024-25 |
| calculated_date | 2026-08-13 |
| peer_group | districts (n=161), unitaries (n=61), metropolitan boroughs (n=36), London boroughs (n=33), counties (n=21) — scored within each class against its median/IQR |
The headline like-for-like efficiency measure: what the council spends per tonne of waste it handles. Lower values suggest more cost-efficient waste operations for a given tonnage. Only meaningful when compared within the same authority type.
Independent recomputation from the published RO5 and Defra files reproduced our figures exactly (Birmingham £176.55/t, Worcester £64.62/t, median £99.0/t, n=318). Two definitional caveats confirmed: (1) Defra's tonnage includes collected street-sweepings and LA-collected trade waste whose costs sit in RO5 lines we exclude — a modest downward bias; (2) the figure is not comparable across authority types: a district's £/t excludes the county's disposal cost on the same tonnes, so only unitaries carry the full cost stack. Compare within authority type only. The extreme high tail is inner-London/City of London collection authorities, not disposal authorities.