Waste collection is once again hitting the headlines with West Oxfordshire and Oxford City councils both proposing changes to the way they run their schemes.

As every council in the country has found, the status quo was not an option. Allowing everyone to fill their bins as they had in the past would lead to big fines — ultimately paid by council taxpayers — as authorities failed to hit targets on reducing landfill.

At the same time, avoiding these fines means introducing new recycling collections at extra cost.

The result, as most councils have found, is that they have had to move to fortnightly collections in order to keep the cost down.

David Cameron has promised a return to weekly collections if the Tories are elected, although it is not clear how this would be funded.

The latest proposals in West Oxfordshire, represented by Mr Cameron in the Commons, provide for some alternate weekly collections, but crucially for a weekly food waste collection.

We have seen no analysis of the cost of this for the council taxpayer, and we must ask the question: How can West Oxfordshire afford this while Oxford City, in its latest scheme, says it can only afford a fortnightly collection of food waste?