A majority of residents are set to see changes to their bin collection days in Reading as working routes have been adjusted.
Changes have been made to the schedule of waste collections that will see 80 per cent of residents having days for the collection of general waste and recycling changed.
The adjustments have been justified by Reading Borough Council officials, which have stated that routes have been changed to optimise the service and clamp down on missed collections.
Announcing the changes, Chris Wheeler, the council’s assistant director of environmental and commercial services said: “The key change is that all our crews will be working in one area each day.
“For example, all of our waste crews will be working in the Caversham area on a Monday.
“80 per cent of households will therefore see a change in the day of their collection as they [the teams] will be in one area.”
Bin collections will take place in the following areas on the defined days:
North Reading – Monday
Lower North & East Reading – Tuesday
West Reading – Wednesday
Central Reading – Thursday
South Reading – Friday
Mr Wheeler continued: “The second major change is that on any given day we will take either refuse or recycling, and that means 40 per cent of residents will have a pattern change in terms of which week their recycling is picked up on.
“There’ll be a bit of a learning curve for residents to get used to that slightly changed pattern.
“It is a very high-profile service, when you make service changes like this, there will be issues, our crews will have to relearn rounds, and our residents will have to get used to new days of collection, which will almost certainly bring some issues that we will need to manage.”
Mr Wheeler announced the adjustments at a council policy committee meeting.
Karen Rowland (Labour, Abbey), lead councillor for environmental services added: “We acknowledge that there have been challenges, but now what this has looked at is a really positive answer, where we are working in one area, we are collecting one waste or recycling at a time so that we have support in there so there will be less failures.
“Residents have to come on board, there will be changes, but also we will be bringing back robust communications along with those bin calendars which residents from across the town know and love from years past.”
It was conceded that there would be a ‘bedding in’ period for neighbours to get used to.
Cllr Rob White (Green, Park) the leader of the opposition said: “I think there will be a bedding in period as there always is with this sort of thing, we’ll give you a few weeks before we start raising issues!”
Councillors unanimously noted the report on the scheduled changes at the meeting on Monday, January 20.
The changes will be implemented on June 9.
