From tomorrow (July 1) Thanet council will be making changes to the way it operates street cleaning and bin emptying.
Crews already work seven days a week all year round and this will continue. However, the council is dividing Thanet into five zones and on any given day there will be crews working across all five areas. Their responsibilities will be emptying litter and dog bins on the streets and in parks or open spaces, clearing fly-tipping and loose waste from council housing communal bin stores, as well as general litter picking and tidying up.
There will be at least two manual street cleaners working in the towns, plus two in Cliftonville, every day. In the summer Thanet council will still employ additional staff specifically for beach cleaning, working from 6am. At peak times they finish at 8pm.
On top of the daily street cleansing, the council is setting up a rolling rota for the deep cleaning teams. They’ll operate three days per week and rotate around the different areas in the district. They’ll work alongside Environmental Operatives, who are trained to do numerous tasks and use various types of equipment. Together they’ll remove graffiti, spray alleyways for weeds and tackle areas that need a bit more attention.
The mechanical sweeper will be out every day, covering different parts of the district. The beach tractor also operates daily, as does the crew that is responsible for emptying the large 1280 litre bins. The bulky waste crew operates Monday to Friday with pickups focused on one of the five zones each day.
To make sure crews focus on emptying the bins that need it most, they’re feeding data into an app. It will show where the bins are frequently full so crews know to empty them more often. This app is currently just for internal use currently but in time, residents will be able to see this data on TDC’s website, check when a bin was last emptied and report a full bin if it’s not already scheduled to be emptied on the same or the next day.
Thanet council says that by sharing the information it is hoped residents will gain a greater understanding about the way the service works. It also ensures crews can be more responsive.
The council has also launched a dedicated online area where residents can view real-time information about bin collections – including the reason why a bin may have been missed or if a bin was uncollected because of a problem accessing the road. To sign up and create an account, visit wasteservices.thanet.gov.uk
