Housing cooperatives withdraw complaint. Fee calculated "from water" is

• From August, residents of apartment blocks in Lublin will pay for waste based on water consumption.
• The city wants to make those who have not yet paid for garbage collection cover the costs of the system.
• Housing cooperatives withdrew their complaint against the city council's resolution.

In December, the Lublin city council decided that from March the new fee for waste collection would be PLN 36 per month for one person in an apartment building and PLN 42 for a resident of a house. The next change is planned for July. The amount of the waste fee in apartment buildings was to depend on water consumption. The waste fee will be calculated by multiplying the number of meters of water used by PLN 13.20.

The deputy mayor of Lublin for investment and development, Tomasz Fulara, explained that the main goal of these changes is to make the system more fair, because - as he pointed out - about 50 thousand people are outside it, i.e. they avoid paying fees. He also pointed out that many other cities are switching to a system of setting waste fees based on the water index.

The chairman of the city council, Jarosław Pakuła, said that it was probably not a perfect system, but - in his opinion - it was the most fair one.

In the first version of the new system, the city assumed an average water consumption of 2.72 cubic meters per person per month.

The four largest housing cooperatives in Lublin did not agree with this standard and filed a complaint with the Provincial Administrative Court. The cooperatives proposed to set the average consumption at 3.70 cubic meters per month per person. Ultimately, it was set at 3 cubic meters per person - as a result, the cooperatives withdrew their complaint from the Provincial Administrative Court.

This means that in special cases, such as the lack of a water meter, a change of the owner of the apartment, the death of a resident or the phased occupation of the building, the fee will be calculated on a lump sum basis - at the level of 3 cubic meters of water per person, i.e. PLN 39.60 per month for one resident - writes Dziennik Wschodni.

Let us recall that the "water" method has a statutory limit on the maximum fee, currently, it cannot be higher than 7.8 percent of the average monthly disposable income per person in total for a household - currently it is PLN 247.03 per month for a household, regardless of consumption and the number of residents.

Let us add that the act also specifies the maximum fee per cubic meter of water used - currently it is PLN 22.17 (0.7% of the average monthly disposable income per person).

Due to the complaint, the water fee will come into effect one month later than planned - i.e. from August.

The water method is used in particular by many municipalities with a tourist character. These include Sopot, Kołobrzeg, Świnoujście, Mielno, Ustka and Karpacz. It allows them to enforce fees for tourists who are not registered.

It is also often used in multi-family buildings in order to tighten the waste management system and catch cases of fee evasion; it is used, among others, in Częstochowa, Szczecin and Łódź.