Peel Commissioners has frozen town rates for another year, but the refuse rate is to go up by £12 per household.

The authority said the rise is due to an above-inflation increase at the Energy From Waste plant (EfW) - which covers both the disposal and collection of domestic waste - and Western Civic Amenity Site in St John’s.

Town clerk, Derek Sewell, told the Examiner that the commissioners have worked to keep the town rates from increasing and have been successful since the April 2016 local elections with the amount remaining at 257p in the pound for a further year.

However, this year’s refuse rate has gone up due to a 6% increase from the waste plant and a 12% increase at the civic amenity waste plant, he said.

This rate has moved from £174 per household to £186 per household.

Commissioner Hazel Hannan said: ’It’s sad we’ve had this increase, especially when this refuse increase only affects a portion of people.’

problem

She added that it’s a problem for people ’in these austere times when we don’t know what’s going to happen in the future’.

In the previous year, the authority announced a rise in the refuse rate which saw the amount change from £170 per property to £174 per property to again meet the increase in disposal costs at the EfW plant and civic amenity site.

A number of boards around the island are using a separate waste rate with Castletown recently introducing a new refuse charge of £135 per property.

Board chairman Colin Leather spoke on behalf of the authority, saying ’the current rating system is not fit for purpose’ and it will ’continue to lobby central government with regard to a more equitable rating system for the island’.

Castletown’s rate is going down by 14.66%.

Onchan, on the other hand, is including the increase in the cost of waste disposal in the rates with a 5.8% rise. The board said the average house will see bills increasing by £11 per year.