Garden waste service to return to fortnightly collections

The garden waste service in South Oxfordshire and the Vale of White Horse will return to its normal fortnightly collections from next week.

The service was temporarily paused to ensure rubbish, recycling and food waste collections weren’t affected during the national shortage of HGV drivers. Collections initially were reinstated last month on a four weekly basis and now the councils’ waste contractor Biffa is confident it has enough drivers to restore the service in full.

The normal garden waste collection schedule will resume on 1 November in South (25 October in Vale) and so from then on, customers can put their brown garden waste bins out on their normal collection day in their recycling week every fortnight.

That means their next garden waste collection will take place as scheduled in the councils’ normal annual waste collections calendar.

To make up for the disruption to the service the councils are extending customers’ current subscription to the service by three months.

The councils are emailing and writing to their garden waste customers this week letting them know the good news.

Councillor Catherine Webber, Vale of White Horse District Council cabinet member for Climate Emergency and the environment said; “I am a keen gardener, so like many of our residents I really appreciate the garden waste collection service. That means I am doubly delighted we’ve been able to work with Biffa to get fortnightly collections back underway. There has been a lot of hard work to get to the service back on track for the long term and we’re grateful for the patience that so many of our customers have shown during a situation that has affected the whole country.” 

Cllr Sue Cooper, South Oxfordshire District Council cabinet member for environment, climate change and nature, said: “We want to thank our garden waste customers for their understanding during this disruption and I am sure they’re just as pleased as us that the fortnightly service is getting back underway. I’d like to apologise again that the service hasn’t met its usual high standards in the past few months, and I hope our customers feel we’re making it up to them by extending this year’s subscriptions by three months