Taken from Wokingham Borough Council News Centre.
Wokingham Borough Council announced that the national shortage of HGV drivers is impacting its waste collection contractor Veolia. The council is working closely with Veolia to minimise disruption to collections as much as possible and is prioritising the collections of food waste, rubbish and recycling.
To help deliver these essential services, it is necessary to suspend garden waste collections for four weeks from 4 October to 1 November. Paid subscriptions will be extended by four weeks from 1 May 2022 to make up for the missed collections. Bulky waste collections will be paused for two weeks from 18 to 31 October. The online booking form has been temporarily suspended as all slots leading up to 18 October are already taken.
Due to the national shortage of HGV drivers we’ve had to suspend garden waste collections from Monday 4 October
✅ Doing this means we can continue your weekly general waste, recycling & food waste collections.
For more information, visit our website ? https://t.co/eYB8waghaT pic.twitter.com/sMO16TzzoY
— Wokingham Borough (@WokinghamBC) September 28, 2021
The council is undertaking a range of measures to keep disruption to waste collection services as much as possible, including working with Veolia on their HGV driver training and recruitment programmes, incentives schemes for new hires and retention bonuses and lobbying the government to take steps to help resolve the shortage.
Cllr Parry Batth, executive member for environment and leisure said, “We want to apologise to our residents for any inconvenience this unprecedented national issue is causing. We are doing everything possible to keep our waste and recycling collections running as normal – we don’t take the suspension of garden waste collections lightly as we know it is an important service to our residents.
“We have taken the difficult decision to suspend garden waste collections for four weeks and bulky waste collections for two weeks to protect the general rubbish, recycling and food waste collections. Users of the garden waste collections will not be out of pocket, as they will get the four weeks back at the end of the paid subscription year, in May 2022.”
Who this will impact:
- Subscribers of the garden waste collections will not have their bins collected for four weeks, from 4 to 31 October.
- The garden waste subscription period will be extended by four weeks from 1 to 29 May 2022 to make up for the four-week suspension.
- For new garden waste customers who have signed up to the service but do not yet have their new bin, Veolia will continue to deliver bins this week (27 September to 1 October) but will suspend new bin delivery for four weeks while garden waste collections are paused (4 to 31 October).
- For garden waste customers who are waiting for a replacement bin, Veolia will continue to exchange damaged bins this week (27 September to 1 October) but will suspend exchanges for four weeks while garden waste collections are paused (4 to 31 October).
- For residents who want to sign up to the garden waste scheme, the council is pausing new subscriptions until the service is up and running again.
- For residents who would like to book a bulky waste collection, please check availability after 31 October.
