West Berkshire Council: Update on waste services for West Berkshire during the Coronavirus pandemic

Update on waste services for West Berkshire during the Coronavirus pandemic

West Berkshire Council is working with its waste contractor, Veolia, to ensure that essential collections can be delivered for as long as is practical during this unprecedented time. Both Veolia and West Berkshire Council would like to thank the residents who have been showing their support with notes, pictures and posts on social media for the waste teams.

Collecting waste from residents across the district remains a high priority for the Council but it is a very challenging situation for everyone with a reduction in staff availability which could result in further service reductions going forward.

The Council is continually monitoring the situation and the following changes have been implemented:

Currently suspended services include:

• HWRCs (this is due to government lockdown guidance)
• Bulky waste collections

Services that have been scaled back:

• Street cleansing
• Container deliveries (under review)

This is a changeable situation and further changes may be introduced in the coming days with or without advance notice. Please keep visiting the Council’s website for updates. We have created a dedicated page on our website that includes all the updates in one place to make it easier to keep up to date with information: https://info.westberks.gov.uk/coronavirus. All residents and businesses are encouraged to check this page regularly for updates across our service areas.

Please avoid making calls/enquiries to the Council on routine matters or non-essential waste services. This will allow our colleagues to focus limited resources on providing essential services. The crews have seen large volumes of excess refuse being presented for collection this week. It is also important that, wherever possible, residents reduce their waste generation at this time or use available storage e.g. sheds or garages to hold back some of the waste where they can and if safe to do so.

If that trend continues, it could overwhelm our already stretched collection systems and lead to significant services disruption going forward. We would also ask residents to be considerate towards the hard-working waste collection teams, who are doing their best for our communities.

The Council’s waste collections may start earlier than normal to give them a chance to finish rounds. Residents are advised to leave their bins out the night before (wherever practicable) or by 6:00am on the collection day.

Steve Ardagh-Walter, Executive Council Member for the Environment at West Berkshire Council, said: “I appreciate that waste collections are a much valued service so please be assured that we are engaging regularly with our contractor to keep collections going as best we can. I ask that residents continue to bear with us and, wherever they can, to adopt good waste reduction measures such as home composting or reusing items for example, leftover food and packaging. Our website offers a number of ideas on reducing food waste, recipes and recycling. I would encourage residents to use this valuable resource while the Council continues to do what we need to do to support residents.”