Leader's Blog

Councillor Brenda Warrington, Executive Leader of Tameside Council

Making Changes to Our Bin Collections

Friday, 04 February 2022

As of 31^st January, changes have been made to the way we do bin collections in Tameside in order to protect limited funds for vital services.

The main difference is the black bin for glass, plastic bottles and cans, and the blue bin for paper and cardboard, will now be collected every three weeks instead of every two weeks. Green landfill bins and brown food and garden waste bin collections will remain the same as they were previously, and the issuing of free compostable caddy liners, the pull out and return service for people with disabilities, and access to our local tips have also not been changed.

In addition, we have introduced a charge of £25.63 per bin for replacement or additional recycling bins. However, after feedback from concerned residents it has been decided that this charge will be waived under certain circumstances, including in situations where a bin has been damaged by one of our waste collection crews or a bin has been vandalised or damaged beyond use. Charges can also be waived for residents on low incomes or means-tested benefits, or where a household can prove that one bin will not give them sufficient capacity to dispose of their waste properly (for example, if they have a large family or specific medical needs).

We know how important bin collections are to our residents, and this is not a decision that we have taken lightly. But we still face the consequences of over a decade of austerity, which has seen our budget cut by almost £200 million and counting. This grim financial situation has also been exacerbated over the last 2 years by the impact of the coronavirus pandemic, which has reduced the income we received through payments and charges, while simultaneously increasing the demand for services in areas such as social care.

Our Budget for 2022-23, which will be presented to Full Council at the end of this month, estimates that we need to make an additional £7 million in savings next financial year to keep our heads above water. Moving to blue and black bin collections every three weeks, which is the way that many other councils in Greater Manchester schedule their collections, will save us £370,000 a year, and introducing a charge for new bins will generate £190,000 a year. That’s over half a million a year every year that can be spent instead on vital services such as supporting and protecting vulnerable children and adults.

We also took steps to make sure that these changes were not rolled out without extensive testing and consultation with our residents to make sure that they work in a real-world situation. At the end of last year we launched a pilot scheme of the changes in three areas in the borough; Haughton Green in Denton, Ridge Hill in Stalybridge, and central Hyde. These areas were picked to give as wide a variety of residents, accommodation types and waste disposal habits as possible to make sure we had a complete picture of how the changes would affect people. We also launched two separate consultations, one with households in the pilot areas and one with the public across Tameside, to ask their views and experiences of the changes. In total we received almost 3,000 responses, all of which were closely analysed and considered before we made any final decisions.

These changes are an opportunity for everybody to do their bit to make sure that, despite austerity and coronavirus, we can still provide effective and sustainable public services to our residents. Please look out for your new collection calendars, if you haven’t received them already, and thank you for your support and understanding as we continue to make difficult financial decisions for Tameside.

Posted by: Executive Leader