Those living in Wycombe should be given a £50 rebate, a councillor has fumed – as he branded a decision to charge residents in the area for green waste collections “disgusting”.

There has been fury among residents ahead of a planned decision to launch an “opt-in” garden waste collection charge for residents in the Wycombe area of £50 per bin, per year, from July.

People in the former Wycombe district area are not currently charged, whereas other areas such as the former Aylesbury Vale, Chiltern, and South Bucks patches have an opt-in service charging for collection of garden waste.

The council says the move to charge Wycombe residents as well will “harmonise” the service – but local councillors fear the decision will “come back to bite” them.

At a Beaconsfield and Chepping Wye Community Board meeting last week, Cllr Alec Barron, of Chepping Wye Parish Council, said it was “horse poop” to say that Wycombe residents had received a “free” garden waste service until now, because they have been “paying for it in our rates in one form or another”.

He said: “I'm afraid you should be saying, 'right, for all those up have the green bins, we'll give you a £50 rebate, but from now on, you're going to have to pay for it’. So then make the whole county pay the extra £50, but give the rebates back to all those have been paying for it in the first place.

“It's disgusting – don’t tell us that so far this has been supplied for free because it never has been. Anybody that says it has been free is talking horse poop.”

Cllr Alan Cecil, from Hazlemere Parish Council, said there has been a lot of opposition to the plans. He said: “There's already people saying ‘I’m not going to pay it and I will put my garden waste in my grey or black bin, or it will be dumped in a hedgerow somewhere, my grass cuttings’.

“Why did Bucks Council make this decision? I can understand it wants to standardise across the county, but why not absorb it into the council tax and abolish the charge for those currently paying?”

Cllr Jonathan Waters, chair of the community board, said it was “not feasible” to absorb the costs into council tax. He said: “[Council tax] would have to have gone up basically, because there's not the money to absorb it. And it's not feasible.

“We would make it free for everybody across Bucks so it would match Wycombe, and that would be a lovely thing to do. But in reality, there's nothing that's free.

“Wycombe is something which was an anomaly. And the problem with that is it's great if you're able to give everybody else the anomaly, but you can't.”

Cllr Ron Gaffney, who represents Hazlemere, argued it would be a “retrograde step” to start charging Wycombe residents and it “will come back and bite us”.

He said: “They've got very good memories, our residents in Hazlemere. They are fully aware that when the amalgamation took place, the biggest amount of money contributed into the pot was from Wycombe and they are asking me and probably my colleagues, why wasn't that taken into account?

“You're saying even it out across the board, but a vast extra sum of money was contributed from Wycombe, not Aylesbury and the others.”

Gerrards Cross councillor Thomas Broom defended the council’s decision, saying there are significant pressures on their budget already due to adult social care costs.

He said: “I think a lot of us would have, in an ideal world, preferred to go the other way and expanded the free collections.

“But we have a responsibility to make sure that our finances stay solid and intact. And, you know, we've got some pretty pertinent local examples of what happens when you let the finances get away from you at local government level, looking over towards places like Slough. And it was a difficult decision.”

Cllr Andrew Wood also warned residents against putting their green waste into their black bins as a way of getting around the charges.

He said: “If you put your cuttings that should go in the green bin in the black bin, it'll be tagged as contaminated and not collected.

“We’re looking at a big problem with Wycombe. There’s no money to spend because at the minute, all the money is going on adult social care because the costs have gone through the roof.

“Believe me, we know when you knock on these doors for votes, people are going to say about what's happened. But there's no money to be spent on this.

“They're just balancing the whole county so that everyone's got the same charges and they see that as making it fair rather than someone of an advantage over everyone else.

“Fully appreciate what [Cllr Gaffney] says about Wycombe putting more money into the pot. But to be honest, South Bucks put in quite a bit as well. It's not being decided by anyone to just punish Wycombe, believe me.”