Unpopular white recycling bags that have been blowing away from houses in Wolverhampton are here to stay for at least another year – after council chiefs admitted they could not afford to upgrade them.

Despite the bags infuriating residents by blowing away at the rate of 500 a month, they will remain in place until May 2010 because of the council’s cash crisis. The authority started the extra collection last October for plastics and cardboard recycling and introduced the bags.

It spent £90,000 on almost 100,000 bags after paying 96p for each one.

The Express & Star can reveal that it would cost the authority £330,000 extra to upgrade to boxes – but that bosses have opted to delay it.

The decision has upset critics, who say the council is trying to “do it on the cheap” and has rushed into starting the service.

The council is cutting £40 million from the budget over the next two years and axeing around 200 posts, and says there is no money in the pot for replacing the bags.

Tory councillor Barry Findlay, deputy leader and cabinet member for the environment, said: “Next year we need to replace some of our refuse collection vehicles, and when we do that we will look at making the service simpler.

“The bags cost 96p each, and to upgrade them to boxes would cost a third of a million pounds more. We just haven’t got the money in our budget to do that this year.

“We need to protect people’s money the best we can and when we started the service, we went for the most cost-effective bags.”

Some residents have said that the bags fall over and blow around in the wind, leaving rubbish strewn down the street. Between December and February there were 1,493 complaints.

Councillor Roger Lawrence, leader of the Labour group, said: “We were proposing to do a pilot of the service, which would have ironed out any problems before it was rolled out. The council has tried to do it on the cheap and this is the end result.”