Waste Collection Service Update – Tuesday 28th June 2022

The latest from Wealden District Council

All daily rubbish, recycling and garden waste collection services have resumed

• If you are due a collection of rubbish, recycling or garden waste please place your bin out for collection as normal.  While the crews will be working hard to complete each collection round every day, to begin with it may be they are unable to finish parts of some rounds.  Please be assured that if your road is not collected on the scheduled day, they will be returning within the next few working days to catch up.  For this reason, if your road is not emptied please leave the bin out ready for collection.

• To ensure your bins are emptied, please make sure they are placed out for collection by 6.30am on your scheduled collection day, or preferably the evening before.  Where bins are not placed out in time for them to be emptied we regret we will be unable to arrange a return collection. This earlier start time will, over the next few weeks, help to catch up the backlog of bin collections that accumulated as a result of the recent strike.

• If you are unsure which bin you are due to have collected or on what dates your collections are, please use the bin day search on our website at www.wealden.gov.uk  Enter your postcode and select your address to see your bin collection days or download a collection calendar.

• Please note that on your first scheduled collection the amount of rubbish, recycling or garden waste that can be removed by the crews is limited so they may not be able to remove some or all the extra waste if bags are placed next to the bin.  At this time Biffa are working to ensure as many households as possible receive at least a collection of the contents of the bins however, as the catch up work progresses reasonable amounts of excess waste will be collected.

• For extra recycling that cannot fit lose into the recycling bin, please place it in non-black bags beside the bin.  We are unable to collect recycling when it is placed in black bags because it is cannot be recycled and is treated as contamination and may result in a rejection of the whole lorry load at the recycling centre.

While Biffa have restarted all collections following the end of the strike there will be some residual disruption to services while the crews remove the extra waste that accumulated during the strike. Please bear with us and continue to check our updates for the latest information on collection services.  Our customer service team are busy helping people across a range of services. The most up to date information is available on our website

Wealden District Council has frozen the price for its garden waste collection service until 2024.  Wealden Councillors made this decision in recognition of the recent disruption to the collection service during the bin strike and, to help residents manage at a time when there are increasing cost of living pressures on households.  This means that Wealden’s garden waste collection service will stay at £55 per bin per year until at least July 2024. 

If you contact us or use your local County Council amenity tip, we kindly ask that you are kind and patient with each other and the staff.  This comes following recent reports of verbal abuse.  These staff are not employed by Biffa and are not involved in the strike in any way.  They are simply working as hard as possible to help manage your enquiries and ensure you have a facility where you can dispose of your waste while collection services return to normal.

You may have a few questions so please see our list of questions and answers to explain why this happened, what the impact may be over the next few weeks and, what you can do.

Once again, we apologise for any inconvenience that may be caused by this situation and thank you for your cooperation and understanding during this time.