West Berkshire Council: Garden and Food Waste Collections Temporarily Suspended

Like many other local authorities across the country, we are facing a difficult January with significantly increased volumes of waste after the Christmas holiday period and a number of collection crews self-isolating. This has impacted parts of our waste collection services meaning we have made the difficult decision to temporarily suspend garden and food waste collections to prioritise rubbish and recycling.

The garden waste collection service will be suspended from Monday 18 to Friday 29 January 2021. We are asking residents whose garden waste is due for collection on or after 15 January 2021 to not put their green garden waste bin out until service can be resumed again from 1 February 2021. This change will also affect food waste collections because they are collected at the same time as garden waste.

Councillor Steve Ardagh-Walter, Executive Member for the Environment at West Berkshire Council, said:

“We have received tremendous support from West Berkshire residents over the past few weeks and I want to thank everyone for their understanding during this challenging time.

“We have not taken this decision lightly to put garden and food waste collections on hold and understand that some residents may be disappointed by this service disruption.

“Our aim is that all waste collection services will be able to continue as normal once the service is reinstated by the end of January. Our contractor’s collection crews have continued to work hard throughout, keeping our waste services running and we would like to thank them for doing a great job.”

At the close of play on Tuesday 12 January, about 5,300 recycling collections (equivalent to just under 8% of households) remained outstanding. The collection of other waste types including general refuse is being completed without any significant disruptions at this time.

If your rubbish (black bin) or recycling (boxes and bags) is not collected as expected, please continue to leave it out and we will collect it as soon as possible.

We are grateful to residents for their continued patience. We are asking residents to kindly avoid calling our Customer Services colleagues, unless necessary, because they are very busy helping various residents with other urgent queries at this time.

You can find out more information on the garden waste service from Council’s website. Our household waste recycling centres are still open for essential visits but you need to book an appointment.