Recycling, household rubbish and garden waste subscription collection policies

Whenever the weather has an impact on collections, we understand that it can be very frustrating for residents. We do our best to communicate quickly and clearly and tell everyone what our recovery plans are as soon as possible. The situation is often one where the picture is constantly moving, and our plans have to change to reflect that. Sometimes an initial request to residents to take containers back onto their properties will be overridden later in the day if conditions change and staff or vehicle resources become available. Social media and the council website will always be the place where the most up-to-date information can be found, but we do also add messages to our phone system for residents who ring us. Where weather affects collections over multiple days disruption is unavoidable, and we ask residents to be patient while we do our best to reschedule and recover.   

We prioritise collecting rubbish and recycling, in order to clear containers from streets. In line with our garden waste subscription service terms and conditions, when bad weather means we can't make collections, the service is suspended until the next scheduled collection (without making refunds).  We don’t reschedule collections relating to this service in order to divert staff and vehicle resources into recovering recycling and rubbish collections. As food waste is collected weekly, if weather conditions cause sufficient disruption, we may ask residents to keep this material until the next scheduled collection. Alternatively, it may have to be collected with rubbish in order to clear containers from the street. If necessary residents are able to put food waste into their household rubbish bin.

In general, we will attempt to quickly provide a day on which affected collections will be made good - usually the Saturday following the disruption in order not to affect the other collections scheduled for the rest of the week.   

Our policy for addressing bad weather events forms appendix 3.