THURROCK Council has announced a change to the way brown kitchen and garden waste bins will be collected from next week – and the leading councillor for the environment has apologized a second time for problems with the refuse collection service in recent weeks.

However, Cllr Aaron Watkins has paid tribute to the efforts of the bin collection teams and praised their dedication and efforts during a difficult period for the department. And he has also thanked residents for their patience.

Thurrock Nub News exclusively reported last week about how the council was bringing in agency workers to tackle shortages of staff

Environment portfolio holder Cllr Watkins said: "I know residents have experienced missed bin collections where the service has had difficulties and there has been confusion over the previous weeks, especially regarding brown bin collections.

"Our waste crews have been working flat out over this period and are dealing with unprecedented demand due to a significant rise in the amount of household waste being produced. This means more work for our crews and more trips in our lorries back to the depot or the tip site in east London to empty heavy loads being carried.

"Where missed collections have occurred, our teams have attempted to go back the same day, the next day and worked weekends to collect as much as possible. I personally want to thank each staff member for their work over the previous months. Your dedication and efforts have not gone unnoticed.

"COVID-19 has not gone away and, like many other professions, staff have been unable to attend work for a variety of reasons.

"We have been following Government guidelines and liaising with the Unions to enable safe ways of working for additional and existing staff to support and increase the capacity of the workforce. This should also assist with the unprecedented demand the service is experiencing and alleviate the collection issues experienced over recent weeks.

"We have been listening to residents' concerns and, moving forward, from Monday 27 July, brown bin collections will remain every two weeks, but will be picked up on the same day as your normal blue and grey/green bin collection. During this time, we still remind residents they can put their food waste into their green/grey bins or self-compost food waste where possible.

"I want to apologise to residents for the difficulties experienced over the previous weeks. Missed bin collections can be reported online at thurrock.gov.uk/report. Thank you to our residents for their patience during this time."

Residents will need to check the street names A-Z pages on the council website for the week – 'Week One' or 'Week Two' – that their garden waste will be collected on.

Concern over missed bin collections

Switch to fortnightly collections