BUSINESSES in Bath could soon have to keep a member of staff around for an hour after they have closed — just to put the bins out.

Shops in central Bath currently have to wait until 5pm before they can put their bins out for the evening business waste collection. Now Bath and North East Somerset Council is set to launch a year-long pilot of moving this to 6pm.

A council report said: “This change in policy for business waste collections is intended to improve the visual appeal of central Bath during shop opening hours and the busy early evening period.”

But 93 per cent of businesses who responded to the consultation are opposed to the plan.

For shops that shut at 5pm, it will mean paying someone to stick around for another hour to put the bins out. The council’s own analysis says this could cost businesses just over £3,000 a year.

The plan will come at a cost for the council too, which would have to pay waste collection staff more overtime pay or launch a full consultation on changing their working hours. The decision report said that all financial implications were currently unbudgeted.

It said: “Given the financial pressures that already exist within waste services, the risk that this would result in an overspend in 2025/26 would be high.”

The council issued a single member decision by council cabinet member resources Mark Elliott on July 2 to bring in the change in timings for a trial year, beginning in September. But that decision could be “called-in” by opposition councillors, if enough of them agree to, and be brought before a council scrutiny panel.

Out of 1,126 businesses identified, just 87 responded to the consultation — despite the council extended the consultation by another week and “doorstepping” businesses to try to encourage them to respond. The consultation ran from February 20 to April 7.

Of the businesses that responded, 43 per cent close at 5pm and a further 33 per cent close at 5.30pm. Seventy-two per cent of them said that the extra cost of paying staff to stay later just to deal with waste was “unfair/unaffordable.”

The council’s consultation report warned: “The consultation has shown that small businesses could be detrimentally affected by a change in permitted collection times during a period of economic challenge.

“There is also a risk that this change in policy could undermine the progress made in improving the public realm in recent years, particularly if it results in business waste bags being left unattended for extended periods.”

At the same time, the pilot also trials a requirement for businesses to label their waste with their company name and address and for them to use reusable rubbish bags instead of single use sacks, where they can be collected and returned to the shop after the collection.

Seventy-six per cent of businesses responding to the consultation supported labelling waste and 69 per cent supported the use of reusable waste sacks.