Brynley Heaven, of Aslackby, warned in The Local last year that microchips in wheelie bins distributed to residents in South Kesteven would be used to charge people.

His claims were strongly denied at the time but now Mr Heaven, who removed the “bugs” from his bins to post them back to the district council, feels vindicated.

He said: “I was right all along. Now the plan has been binned.

“I said all along that the real reason for the chips was because they were going to experiment with charging us for collections of household waste.”

The Government had been expected to announce the introduction of Pay-as-you-Throw schemes this week but on Wednesday Defra confirmed that no final decision had been made.

Mr Heaven added: “They denied it but it seems that Gordon Brown has pulled the plug on the scheme.

“I am now waiting to hear what South Kesteven District Council has to say.”

Critics of the scheme believe the whole plan has already been dumped by Downing Street officials.

Mr Heaven says he supports recycling and deplores waste but claims charging households for collections is not the answer.

He warns rubbish would simply be dumped by householders not willing to pay extra or to reduce their recyclable waste.

“If you start charging for collections people will try to avoid paying,” said Mr Heaven.

“We are all responsible but if the Government put one tenth of the pressure on supermarkets that they put on us they would get twice as much for their buck.

“They could start by cutting down on packaging.”

An SKDC spokeswoman insisted the council never had any intention to charge residents for their waste.

She said: “The bins we introduced over a year ago already had chips in them.

“We bought them ready-chipped in case the Government introduced new legislation.

“We have no plans to charge.

“We couldn’t anyway unless there was empowering legislation.

“We lobbied Government saying we would prefer to reward good recyclers rather than beat those who were not so good.”