Decision details

To date all grey, blue and green bin collections have been maintained, with all collections having been completed as per schedule, whilst brown bin collections were suspended for one full 2 weekly cycle from Monday 23 March, through till Friday 03 April.

The Waste Management service has not suffered a hugely significant loss of staff yet due to the coronavirus, hence the ability to maintain the service as well as it has. With this in mind, the intention is to continue to collect grey, blue and green bins as per schedule, whilst embarking upon a final collection of the brown bin. This is because a large proportion of the brown bins will contain food waste. After this next collection residents will be advised to put their food waste in the grey bin until regular brown bin collections restart.

Delivery of the above plan is entirely dependent upon availability of sufficient staff. To build resilience, a number of volunteer staff from other services such as Grounds Maintenance, Street Lighting and Street Cleaning have been inducted on waste collections.

Despite the above, if the loss of staff (both management and operational) makes the delivery of a ‘normal’ service impossible then all resources will be switched to weekly collections of the grey bin only. Residents will be asked to put all their waste, including food; paper/card and glass, cans and plastic bottles in the grey bin. Garden waste should not be placed in the grey bin and should be stockpiled in the garden or composted at home instead. Grey bin collections will be made on residents’ scheduled day of collection.

All of the above messages will be communicated and explained to residents via the Council’s website, the intranet, social media and via email to those households that subscribe to the Council’s bin alert service. The latter is by far and away the most effective method of communication in that it enables bespoke messages to be sent directly to residents. Every effort is being made to encourage a greater take up of this service. There are currently nearly 33,000 households who have signed up.

To maintain social distancing within the waste collection service, with effect from last Friday no vehicles carry more than 2 people. This means that every bin wagon with a crew of Driver + 2 Operatives is followed by a support vehicle carrying the second Operative.

Note that waste collections will operate as normal on Good Friday, as is the case every year.

Bulky waste collections remain suspended.