A council has become the first in Wales to approve plans to collect bins once every three weeks.

Gwynedd Council said the measure would save the council £350,000 a year and would ensure it did not face ‘significant’ fines for missing recycling targets.

The new three-weekly collection will be introduced in Dwyfor from October 2014, then rolled out in the Meirionnydd and Arfon areas during 2015. There will be no changes to weekly recycling and food waste collections.

Gwynedd Council’s environment cabinet member, Cllr Gareth Roberts, said: ‘In 2012/13, Gwynedd was within a hair’s breadth of incurring a £123,000 Welsh Government fine for failing to reach national recycling and landfill targets. By acting now and working with local communities, we are confident that we will be able to significantly improve our recycling levels so that we can avoid huge financial penalties which we simply cannot afford.

‘As well as avoiding huge financial penalties, it is also a fact that cuts in Government funding mean that Gwynedd Council is facing a funding gap of around £50m between now and 2017/18 and that implementing these changes now will deliver an annual financial saving of around £350,000 for the council and enable us to avoid painful service cuts elsewhere.’

A consultation on the proposals found around half of respondents said a three-weekly collection would cause them problems, mainly due to odours.

Cllr Roberts added: ‘In response to the comments received, we have already identified arrangements which will allow us to collect nappies every fortnight, to make special arrangements for disabled residents and to provide larger residual waste bins for households with more than six residents.

‘We will also be considering the impact of changes for those Gwynedd communities with a high transient population such as the student areas of Bangor as well as flats and housing blocks.’