Residents and councillors have welcomed planned changes to garden waste bin collections across Gedling borough
Gedling Borough Council admitted that brown bin collections—used for garden waste—have been “consistently missed” in the past few months.
The authority has pledged to make changes by March next year after a raft of complaints, including rethinking the routes bin lorries take.
The problems have affected residents in various parts of Gedling borough, including Burton Joyce and the new Hallows Rise estate off Colwick Loop Road.
Mark Owen, who has lived in Church Road in Burton Joyce for seven years, told the Local Democracy Reporting Service (LDRS) his brown bin collection has been missed on four consecutive occasions.
He welcomed the planned changes, but urged the council to inform residents if collection days change.
“It should have been collected last Friday, but it was only just collected on Tuesday,” he said.
“We’ve got quite a big garden. I don’t want to have to buy two bins, and it would be fine if they collected it.
“Originally, I thought it was just me, but I spoke to a few others here, and their bins had not been done.
“It has only been a problem for the last two or three months. The annoying thing is we have to pay for this.”
Another resident of Church Road said her brown bin had only been missed once, and said the council had been “very nice” on the phone.
“I called because if it was going to be another fortnight I would have had to take a trip to the tip,” she added.
The problem has also been plaguing the new Hallows Rise estate, off Colwick Loop Road near Netherfield.
Samantha Stackhouse, who has lived in Magpie Street for a year, said her garden waste bin had been missed three times.
“I started paying in June,” she said. “They have got better; we had to fill out the [complaint] form two times. You have to pay [for the service] as well, which is frustrating.”
The service runs every year from the start of April to the end of March the following year – with no collections in January and February.
The cost for the 2025/26 service is £45 for one brown bin, and any additional brown bins cost £23 each.
Director of operations at the council, Sarah Troman, said: “We know it is not sustainable to deliver it with the crews that we have got, with the customer base we have got, so, as soon as we start to slow down – which should be in the next six weeks or so – we are going to look at completely revamping those rounds,” she said.
“There will be a little bit of pain in terms of lots of collections, days might change, but it means when we start again in March we will be in a much stronger position.
“We know there have been lots of consistently missed bins, and the numbers have improved a lot over the last few weeks, but we are now down to the sticky ones.”
Cllr Sam Smith (Con), who represents the Trent Valley ward, told the LDRS: “It should help as the council has now finally accepted that it doesn’t have the capacity to meet the current route demands.
“So re-routing will hopefully add that capacity in and reduce the number of missed collections, although it will mean a change of collection dates.”
