AT least £1million will be spent for Dorset residents to continue dumping their waste and recycling in neighbouring council areas.

The two-year cost is mostly spending which had not been budgeted for and could add to the council’s existing £14.7m predicted end of year overspend.

It could also now lead to Dorset looking to charge its neighbours to allow their residents to continue to use household recycling centres at Shaftesbury, Sherborne and Wimborne. A study on ‘out of county’ use has been agreed to assess the numbers involved.

It may also eventually lead to Wimborne’s overcrowded tip being replaced by a new centre and a waste transfer station – although that also has no budget and a previous review decided it was too expensive to proceed with at a cost of between £3 and £5million.

Ward councillor Shane Bartlett says the Wimborne household recycling centre (HRC) is struggling, partly because of Bournemouth Christchurch and Poole council area residents which use it, in turn causing traffic problems for the area.

He says he would like to see the centre continue to be used but says that something needs to be done about the expected further increase in traffic from new homes at Oakley Lane and off Magna Road – around 600 in total.

In Shaftesbury around 14 per cent of the town’s HRC is believed to come from across the border. Wiltshire Council has already introduced a ban on Dorset and other non-Wiltshire residents using their HRCs.

Cabinet members agreed this week to find an extra £405,000 this year and another £535,000 in the following financial year for the cross-border rubbish convoy. The decision is for two years but the same report suggests that finding and financing a new site in the east of the county is likely to take longer than that, if it can be funded.

The decision will cost taxpayers across the county £215,000 to allow Dorset residents to use the Somerley centre in Hampshire; with arrangements at Millhams and Christchurch in the Bournemouth, Poole and Christchurch area adding another £250,000 and an extra £70,000 for the Nuffield household recycling centre in Poole.

A council report says that on the plus side residents living close to tips on the other side of county borders will not now be asked for additional payments and will not have to travel long distances to use Dorset Council tips elsewhere within the county, reducing pollution and fuel use.

For residents who used Somerley the nearest suggested Dorset Council recycling centre was at Wimborne, which, for some residents, would have meant a round-trip of more than an hour.