As you are aware Maidstone and Mid Kent operate a subscription based garden waste service. Over the past 6 months, the subscription rate for the service has increased by nearly 2,000 properties in Maidstone, with a total of 6,000 additional subscriptions across the whole of Mid Kent. This is largely due to the closure of the Household Waste Recycling Centres (HWRCs) and then the subsequent restrictions and booking system introduced when they reopened.

The rapid increase in the service has resulted in difficulties completing the work within the crew’s legal working hours, despite additional staff and vehicles being deployed. The primary issue is that the additional subscribers are spread across the three Boroughs and therefore the provision of one or two additional vehicles is not sufficient to cover the mileage between properties.

Therefore Biffa are about to implement a re-routing exercise to improve the efficiency of the rounds and enable the services to not only complete the current workload but have more resilience to further growth in the service.

This means that a number of properties will experience changes to DAY and / or collection WEEK for their GARDEN WASTE service. This will NOT affect the refuse, recycling or food waste collections. There are already many properties in the Borough that have a different garden collection day to their refuse and recycling, however this number will grow to enable the subscribed service to operate efficiently.

Some properties will experience a change in week of collection which may result in slightly longer wait between collections during the transitional fortnight. However Biffa will be carrying out additional collections during that fortnight to ensure no one is disadvantaged. Residents affected by this, will be notified of their new collection day and the additional interim collection day on a leaflet accompanying the attached letter. The ‘look-up’ function on the website will be updated next week to ensure that it remains accurate to provide residents’ their next collection date.

The changes are being implemented from Monday 21 September 2020 and the letter and leaflet is due to be sent out this week.

If you have any queries please can you direct them to waste@maidstone.gov.uk so the team can respond.