FAQs - Hills Municipal Collections industrial action

Wiltshire Council has published some frequently asked questions (FAQs) to answer residents' questions around the impact of the ongoing waste industrial action.

Yesterday, the decision was made by Wiltshire Council and Hills Municipal Collections to immediately temporarily suspend recycling services in the county until 21 March to prioritise household waste and chargeable garden waste collections. This is due to the ongoing industrial action between some Hills Municipal Collections workers and the GMB Union, which is causing significant disruption to services. The current phase of industrial action is expected to last until 19 March, but there potentially could be more.

Cllr Dr Mark McClelland, Wiltshire Council Cabinet Member for waste, said: "Due to the nature of the industrial action this is a fast-moving situation but we are trying to keep people updated throughout with any changes to guidance or collections.

"We expect the recycling service to resume again week beginning 21 March, and we thank people for their patience while we work hard to mitigate the impact for residents. This issue obviously affects a lot of the Wiltshire population so we hope the FAQs we've put together, that we'll keep updated, will be useful and help answer some of those initial queries people may have.

"It is deeply disappointing today to see more instances of waste vehicles being prevented from leaving the depots and this continues to have a knock-on effect for our services, but we're determined to limit disruption as much as we can."

If people have already put out their black boxes and blue lidded bins they should take them back in until their next scheduled collection date. When recycling collections do resume, the waste teams will accept additional recycling materials that have been stockpiled during this time. This means people will be able to leave out additional materials in separate bags/suitable containers by their bins if they can't fit it in their containers.  People are asked to please not report a missed recycling collection as we shall be unable to respond to these.

The suspension of recycling services does not affect  general household waste or garden waste collections. People are asked to continue to put out their household waste and garden waste bins on their scheduled collection day by 7am, and if they're not collected, to leave them out and where possible they will be collected the next day.

The frequently asked questions can be found at Industrial action FAQs.

For the latest updates on any disruption or changes to waste collection services, people are asked to keep an eye on Wiltshire Council's Twitter feed (opens new window).

If people need to get rid of any excess rubbish or recycling, the council's household recycling centres remain open. More information about Household Recycling Centres (HRCs).