What’s changing?
From 5th February, a new contractor will be emptying the bins in Surrey Heath. You’ll see new vehicles and staff who work for Amey and while your bins will still be emptied on the same day, there will be some small changes:
- A separate vehicle will be collecting food waste so your caddy will be emptied at a different time to your rubbish or recycling bins.
- You might find that your bins are emptied at a different time of day, so please don’t report a missed bin until after 5pm on your collection day.
- Textiles, small electrical items and household batteries will now be collected every week. Please put them out in separate carrier bags.
- Existing garden waste customers will be contacted with details of how to renew their subscription with Amey. You have until the end of February to renew your subscription and garden waste bins will continue to emptied until then.
- From 5th February, please call Amey on 03332 340978 for any waste and recycling enquiries.
- Please report missed bins within two working days of the missed collection.
Why are the changes happening?
The changes are part of a new initiative which has seen Surrey Heath’s waste services combined with three other local councils in Surrey to form Joint Waste Solutions. This new organisation will manage the new waste collection contract with Amey across all four areas and save around £2.5m a year whilst maintaining high quality services. The new contract started in Elmbridge and Woking last year and Mole Valley will join it later in 2018.
How will the savings be made?
Working together will enable more efficient and effective use of vehicles, depot facilities and route planning. In addition, access to advanced ICT solutions will provide better data to help improve our services and communications, which will help residents to recycle more.
Will there be further changes?
At the moment, collection days will remain the same. When the four councils involved in the contract have joined the service, we’ll look at the most efficient way to do the collections across the four areas.
If collection days are to change in the future, we will let residents know in advance.
Reporting missed bins
Our aim is to make sure that the contract change goes as smoothly as possible. However the bin collection service is a large and complex operation, so please bear with us if there are any teething problems while the new crews and ways of working become established.
If you need to report a missed bin collection, you can do that here.