More garden waste misery for Basingstoke and Deane residents as collections suspended again

The beleaguered garden waste collection service in Basingstoke and Deane is being suspended again due to bin crew staff absences.

The decision is being made to allow crews to focus on the council’s core waste and recycling services, where there is currently a backlog of collections from the Christmas and New Year period.

The borough council has said the fortnightly service will be suspended indefinitely until it is confident Serco – the council’s waste contractor – can resume a reliable service.

Garden waste subscriptions will be extended to cover the missed collectionsc

The service – which costs £60 a year per brown bin – has been plagued by problems over the last six months, most recently being suspended for more than six weeks over October and November due to a lack of HGV drivers.

There were further missed collections in July when the ‘pingdemic’ caused many drivers to self-isolate.

The borough council’s cabinet member for recycling and waste Hayley Eachus said: “We are really disappointed to be temporarily suspending the garden waste collections, particularly at a time when many of our customers are looking to use the service to recycle their real Christmas trees, even if they have not been doing much gardening.

“We are sorry that they are not receiving the service that they expected.

“We will continue to review the situation and will restart the service as soon as we are able to.

“The crews worked to collect extra waste and recycling over the Christmas and New Year period.

“However owing to bin crew absences, we have had to suspend the garden waste service to protect the core waste and recycling service until there are enough staff to run both reliably again.”

The suspension will enable crews to prioritise the 216,000 weekly waste, recycling and clinical waste collections.

The council added that the staffing situation would be reviewed regularly.

Serco’s regional operations manager James Farquhar said: “Due to staff absences, we are unable to re-commence the garden waste service.

“We will of course commence this service as soon as possible and we apologise for any inconvenience caused.”

For more information on bin collections in Basingstoke and Deane visit www.basingstoke.gov.uk or follow @BasingstokeGov on Twitter or Facebook.