Cuts to waste collection service

Wiltshire Council's Cabinet has approved a re-design of the council's waste and recycling collection rounds, involving changes to the working patterns of council drivers and loaders.

The changes mean the council will spend less on the service. There will be a collection day change for most people from the end of September.

New waste and recycling collection rounds will be implemented in two phases, the first in April 2014 and the second in September.

In April the Council will reduce the waste management fleet by four vehicles and twelve staff (four drivers and eight loaders). This should be achieved by a reduction in agency staff covering vacant posts. There will be no changes to collection days at this stage.

In September there will be further collection round changes which will mean day changes for residents but their collections would be on the same day in the fortnightly cycle (for example, household waste and garden waste on Monday in one week and plastic bottles and cardboard with black box recycling on the Monday of the second week). The Council will also implement 'fixed compressed hours' for drivers and loaders. This will mean these staff continue to work 37 hours per week; but they would work four days per week instead of five. This would result in a longer working day of 9.25 hours, excluding breaks. More vehicles (five, six or seven) will be scrapped and more workers (minimum fifteen maximum twenty-one) will be lost. The exact numbers will be known once the new rounds are finalised in June.

Council drivers and loaders would continue to work Monday to Friday but would take one day off during the week in addition to Saturday and Sunday.

Accurate cost savings will be known later but should be between £700,000 - £875,000 in a full year.

WC claims these changes represent, "A reasonable balance of savings and disruption to residents."