Hi Susan,
My understanding of section 496(1) is that Council MUST levy a domestic waste management charge for every parcel of rateable land for which the service is available. Therefore here at Wollondilly even if a residential property opts not to use the service if it is available to them we advise them that we still must levy a charge.
We do have several circumstances here where properties aren’t serviced by agreement. The usual circumstance for this is properties with limited access or located on a private road. The service is considered not to be available to these properties & no charge is levied. We also have a reduced vacant land charge for vacant land only but all other assessments are levied a full charge even if they don’t use the service.
If we had an opt in service I doubt that we’d get it past our auditors. As the cost of providing waste services is spread between all properties liable for the service unless something is charged on assessments that have opted out it would effectively increase the cost of the service for all other properties who are correctly paying for waste services.
Our waste area also added a new extended route here a few years back. Servicing (or at least charging) all properties on the new route was needed to justify it so all assessments on the new route have now been charged. They did give one year notice to residents to allow them time to end their contracts with other waste providers if they needed to though.
Regards,
Simone
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