Council to draw up fortnightly bin rounds

Brighton and Hove City Council is taking steps to switch from weekly to fortnightly rubbish collections after expanding the range of items that can be recycled and starting weekly food waste collections.

The council’s cabinet approved a proposal to start drawing up new fortnightly rubbish rounds, alongside weekly recycling and food waste rounds, at a meeting at Hove Town Hall yesterday (Thursday 22 January).

Cabinet members were told about a “waste composition analysis”. One found that more than a third of all rubbish was food waste.

Labour councillor Tim Rowkins, the council’s cabinet member for environmental services and net zero, said that Brighton and Hove was one of just 62 councils out of 317 still collecting household rubbish weekly.

He said that some councils collected the rubbish every three or four weeks.

The fortnightly plans would cover household kerbside collections only, not communal bins.

He said that the cabinet was not being asked to move directly to fortnightly collections but rather to model the proposed rounds and costings for an “optimum” service which would come back to councillors later this year.

Councillor Rowkins said: “At the moment, we have 14 rounds to cover our kerbside refuse. You could take that to seven and that gives your fortnightly regime.

“The other way you can do it is to take the opportunity to build in additional resilience, additional catch-up capacity.

“Maybe have a couple of rounds that aren’t allocated to any particular part of the city that float around and mop up.”

He said that “a missed collection in a fortnightly regime has a bigger impact on residents than a missed collection in a weekly regime”.

Councillor Rowkins said that, later this year, it would also be possible to recycle foil and cartons, in addition to the plastic tubs and pots that were recently included in the list of items that could be recycled.

He said: “That is a very big chunk of waste indeed that’s moving from refuse into recycling waste streams.

“So now we’re asking the question, does it really make sense to drive up and down every street in the city every week collecting bins that are half empty.”

Labour councillor Jacob Allen, the council’s cabinet member for customer services and the public realm, recalled his university days in Guildford when the council was looking at refuse collections every three weeks there.

Councillor Allen said: “The clock at Hove Town Hall is 10 minutes ahead because we’re ahead of our time but on this situation we’re not.

“Lewes District Council next door is consulting on this right now. Arun District Council approved this move last year.

“So not only are we not the only ones doing this, we’re not the only ones doing this in our neighbourhood.”