Reduced garden waste service to resume for New Forest residents
New Forest District Council still struggling with severe staff shortages.
Garden waste collections in the New Forest District Council area will restart on September 13th after being suspended since mid July due to staff self-isolating and driver shortages.
The green waste will be collected every four weeks rather than the traditional fortnightly service with that measure likely to stay in place until Christmas to allow staffing levels to recover.
In order to focus on garden waste the local authority is also stopping its bulky waste service for large household items until further notice. No new bookings will be taken.
Chris Noble, NFDC service manager for waste and transportation said,
“The important thing was to get the black and clear sack collections done so we had no choice but to stop the garden waste collection service. Whilst it is good news we can restart from next week, we do continue to have severe staff shortages and are operating our waste services at around 60% of full staffing levels. But after eight weeks we know that garden waste needs to be collected. I would like to thank our customers who have been so supportive and understanding, and a special recognition to the waste teams who are working so hard and have pulled together to get the job done.”
The council will ensure that customers receive the number of collections they paid for in 2021-22 by extending the service further into 2022.
Chris said,
“Since the garden waste service was initially suspended on 19 July, we have launched new recruitment campaigns and had new members of staff join our team. However, every day we are having to look at what we can realistically achieve with reduced staff available. We know that lots of other councils in Hampshire and beyond are in a similar situation. Project Integra (Hampshire’s waste partnership, of which NFDC is a member) is a signatory on a letter to government which outlines the problems that local authorities are currently facing in delivering frontline services”.
While the service gets back up to speed, NFDC are unable to accept new garden waste customers and no additional bags will be sold. This will be reviewed on an ongoing basis.
More information, including collection dates, will be included in a letter to be sent to all garden waste customers during the week of 6 September.