Weekly bin collection funding worth £250m will be shared between a further 85 councils, local government secretary Eric Pickles has announced.

Intending to ensure that authorities retain weekly bin collection schemes, the Government has selected 90 projects from across the country to benefit from the fund and estimates that 6m families will now be able to retain access to the service.

Pickles has also issued a warning that councils failing to provide a weekly household waste collection service could risk losing public funding.

Birmingham City Council is to receive the largest portion of the Weekly Collection Support Scheme (WCSS) fund, being allocated £29,785,495 to implement a recycling scheme for all households, weekly recycling collections for over 100,000 premises, and support weekly residual waste collections.

Bournemouth is set to receive over £21m in funding for two combined schemes, while Stoke and Medway will obtain over £14m each to support their bin collection programmes.

Pickles said: ‘Every Englishman has a basic right to have their household rubbish taken away each and every week - it is the most visible council service people get. Yet under the previous administration weekly bin collections halved while their council tax bills doubled.

‘Over 6m families will breathe a sigh of relief because we have put a stop to the fetid fortnightly rot and saved many weekly collections from extinction, all while increasing recycling rates by hundreds of thousands of tonnes to boot,’ Pickles added.

Responding to the announcement, cllr Mike Jones, Chairman of the Local Government Association's environment board, said: ‘Councils will be using this money to make an already efficient and well-run service even better for residents. There is no one-size-fits-all solution – something which Department for Communities and Local Government has acknowledged through the sheer variety of council schemes it has awarded funding.’

Earlier this week, industry experts from groups including the Chartered Institution of Wastes Management and the Anaerobic Digestion and Biogas Association urged Pickles to prioritise the naming of successful WCSS schemes after delays had adversely impacted on council budgets.