New waste and recycling contract

At the end of March we started a new waste and recycling contract with SUEZ.

Although the contractor has changed, the majority of staff have stayed the same. Many of our resident's have had changes in waste collections in terms of different collection days or varying times of the collections.

This has resulted from a review of collection services, which was required and would have happened no matter who the contractor for the new service would have been. Over time the borough has seen new development with many new homes being added to the closest waste collection round.

Consequently, this meant that over time we had developed uneven workloads for the staff crewing the collection rounds. In addition, the waste transfer station in Ashford was struggling to be able to deal with varying amounts of waste and fleet collection times, on our rounds. 

With this new contract we had the opportunity to maximise the flexibility of the fleet, provision different vehicle widths (to ensure better access where historic issues were known), reduce the environmental impact of our fleet by moving to electric bin lifts (reducing carbon impact) and have better tracking information on our fleet to ensure even workloads for our crews. 

The ability to give "live" information to customers on collection crew progress, to have cameras on all our vehicles for the safety of our crews and the ability for us to quickly remedy complaints about missed bins is already proving very helpful and will continue to do so throughout the contract. 

This new way of working, new fleet and new technology has presented us with challenges which we are working hard as a waste partnership (with Maidstone and Swale councils) to overcome. We are confident it will deliver long term benefits for residents, despite some initial disruption. 

The waste we collect in your bins and the frequency of collections has stayed the same. You can check your collection days on our look up tool and use the how do I dispose of section if you are unsure which bin an item should be placed in. 

You can also download the new waste and recycling service guide [pdf] 11901KB.

Recent figures from Defra show that the Ashford borough has the highest recycling rate in Kent, with a recycling rate of 51% so thank you for your efforts!

Report a missed bin - what you need to do

If you have a missed bin collection you need to report it the day after your collection was due, but no later than 48 hours thereafter. Once you have reported your missed bin please leave it presented for collection. 

If when you try to report your missed bin you get a 'your road has not been serviced yet' message, this means we are aware we have not yet made your collection and will be coming to your property to collect so please leave your bin presented. 

Make sure your bin is presented by 6am next to the public highway on your collection day.