Blackburn with Darwen Council has missed two key targets for recycling the borough's household rubbish its leader has revealed.

Cllr Phil Riley described the poor performance as 'disappointing' as he revealed the statistics to fellow councillors.

In 2023/24 the authority planned to recycle 33 per cent of its household rubbish but has failed to do so, partly because it had to send more than the proposed 1,300 tonnes of contaminated waste to landfill tips or for incineration.

The bad environmental news was revealed to the authority's full Council Forum when Cllr Riley revealed its performance against 40 targets set in its Corporate Plan.

Recycling rates in Blackburn with Darwen are too low

This showed that of the 38 for which measures were available, 24 were rated “Green” as on track and performing well, 10 were rated “Amber” where delivery is on track and currently being managed, with four rated “Red” where performance is, or likely to be, off track.

The other two missed targets were for the number of children receiving care from the council's children's service department at 389 per 10,000 compared to the expected 339, and its failure to recruit 12 new foster carer households managing just seven.

Cllr Riley told Thursday night's meeting: "This is the report of the Corporate Plan update.

"There are 40 indicators which have been agreed as being the kind of measures that we think would indicate how the council is doing.

"The majority as you can see from the report are green, there's a number that are amber and there are four that are red.

"It's obviously disappointing that there are reds in that that indicates a failure.

"The number of children in social care is pretty hard to manage. It's an indication really of deprivation and the 15 years of austerity that we've had.

"Currently that number is significantly higher than we would have hoped.

"One the number of foster carers I think there's a lot being done to try and mitigate that.

"The two that are disappointing I think are the two on recycling.

"The recycling rate in Blackburn with Darwen is poor.

"I think it indicates a lack of interest by large numbers of our fellow citizens in the process of doing the recycling.

"And it costs us money.

"We have an issue with contaminations and the fact that we are then having waste that's being collected that ought to be recyclable but then turns out not to be because somebody has put a chicken tikka masala in it by mistake.

"There's real scope for improvement.

"As a community, there's clearly more that could be done."

Leader of the 4BwD opposition group Cllr Mustafa Desai: "On the household recycling, the challenge is how do you educate the population?"