Fears that flytipping could increase across the Towns have been highlighted as Medway Council starts charging householders for bulky waste collections.

If you want your old sofa, mattress or broken fridge picked up from your home you will have to fork out £20.

Before the charge was introduced, residents were able to book one free collection a year but had to pay £19 for any further collection within the same 12 month period.

However, from Friday1 the authority will charge £20 for bulky waste collections (maximum of three items) as part of its budget for the next financial year.

But Cllr Andy Stamp, Medway Labour spokesman for regeneration, culture and transport, said: “Scrapping the free bulky waste collection is short-sighted and counter-productive.

It is a ‘back-of-a-fag-packet’ policy which council bosses estimate will boost the council coffers by £200,000, but bizarrely they do not think it will lead to an increase in the cost of removing flytipping.

“What are residents supposed to do if they can’t afford to pay to remove bulky items of furniture, or if they haven’t got a car to take the items to the local waste recycling centres, or if they are physically unable to lift and move the item themselves?

“The free bulky waste collection has already been cut in recent years, with a free collection every six months cut to just one free collection per year.

“Since then, flytipping has increased significantly. In fact, during the past three years, there has been a 63% increase in the amount of waste that has been flytipped in Medway.

“The reality is that inflicting another £20 tax on Medway’s residents will lead to a further increase in flytipping, resulting in higher clean-up costs. So their figures simply don’t stack up.”

To help combat the issue, the council has started using two of its own tipper trucks which enable its community wardens to work more closely with the environmental enforcement team.

By going along to the scene of a flytip incident in the truck, the team can now clear the rubbish once they have searched for evidence and completed local inquiries.

In the past, wardens would have had to report it to a contractor for collection, which could sometimes take a week.

So far this year, the teams have removed just under 126 tons of rubbish from our streets.

A Medway Council spokeswoman added: “From April 1 we will be charging £20 for bulky waste collections. Previously, Medway residents could book one free collection a year and any further collections within the same 12-month period came at a charge.

“The changes will bring Medway in line with other councils in Kent which have charged for the collections of bulky items for some time.

“While we would have liked to continue to offer one free collection, this change formed part of the budget setting process for 2016/17, in which vast savings had to be made.”