Normally, the announcement of a quarter of a billion pounds of Government money being found to improve local government services would be welcomed with open arms.

But we were not surprised at the universally lukewarm response from councils in Oxfordshire to the news from Communities Secretary Eric Pickles that money was available to resume weekly bin rounds.

First, it is unclear just how effective this pot of money would really be if every council had suddenly decided to opt to return to weekly collections.

And having spent years and considerable amounts of public money persuading people to move over to alternate weekly collections, our councils have proven understandably reluctant to make what is effectively a U-turn over waste collections.

It clearly makes sense that as little of our waste as possible goes to landfill and people across Oxfordshire have risen to the challenge in recent years, with recycling rates soaring, to place some of our local authority areas among the best in the country.

South Oxfordshire District Council introduced a new waste collection service in 2009, which features a weekly collection of food waste and fortnightly collections of rubbish and recycling on alternate weeks.

Earlier this year, it emerged that the council recycled or composted 70.56 per cent of its waste in 2010/2011, making it the best recycler in the country.

SODC leader Ann Ducker said that Mr Pickles was coming to give a talk to Didcot Conservative Club later this month and said that she planned to tackle him over the scheme which she said was “a total waste of money”.

In West Oxfordshire too, there is no prospect of David Cameron’s non-recyclable bin being emptied every week, as the district councillor responsible for waste collections, David Harvey, said households were “very comfortable” with fortnightly waste collections because food scraps and recyclables were still collected weekly.

It is clear that there is in Oxford, in particular, a group of people who would like to see the return of weekly collections.

But across the county as a whole, councils said although some individual residents were still experiencing problems with where they put their wheelie bins, or getting more sacks, there had not been a great uprising complaining about fortnightly collections.

Presumably if the majority of councils turn down Mr Pickles’ cash for waste collections, it will still be available for other uses?