By Garden waste service to be reinstated in Oxford
Oxford’s garden waste collection service will resume from Monday 4th of May, having been halted due to safety concerns and staff shortages amid the coronavirus crisis.
Oxford City Council have said that the return of garden waste collections in early May will be part of a permanent change to the collection schedule, as garden waste bins will now be collected the same week as green bins and lilac sacks, instead of alongside blue bins.
Current subscribers can now be provided with new bins if they require, and the service is now open to new subscriptions.
“The increasing volume of blue bin waste means it is not possible to revert to the old system with staff reduced in number by sickness and self -isolation”, a Council spokesperson said.
Oxford City Council is urging residents not to leave out additional garden waste which is not contained in your bin or eco sack, as it cannot be collected.
Residents are asked to put the garden waste bins and brown eco sacks at the boundary of their property the evening before collection, or by 6am on collection day.
Due to the Early May bank holiday, collections will be brought forward by one day from Tuesday 5 May to Friday 8 May, including the collection of brown bins and garden waste.
This means that if your usual collection day is Tuesday 5 May, that week it will be on Monday 4 May.
If your usual collection falls on Wednesday 6 May, your collection will be on Tuesday 5 May instead, and so on. This applies to this bank holiday week only.
Garden waste bins need to be placed out for collection on the new assigned day with the green bins. For the time being, the Council say it will not be possible to return for missed garden waste bins or brown eco sacks.
Councillor Nigel Chapman, Cabinet Member for Customer Focused Services, said:
“We had no choice other than to suspend the garden waste service in March as we needed to divert our resources to services that are needed by every household in the city.
“During this time, many of our staff were unavoidably affected by the constraints that the coronavirus crisis and social isolation have brought, and the first priority for both the Council and ODS must be the health and safety of the collection crews, whilst maintaining essential waste collections.
“I am happy that we are in a position to restart collections and those residents who have paid for this service will once again have their garden waste removed.”
By the time the service restarts, it will have been suspended for a total of six weeks. As this is a subscription service, an additional six weeks will be added to each household’s contract automatically.
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