Paper and cardboard collections in Thanet have been delayed due to a shortage of drivers, says Thanet council.
Complaints across the isle of missed mixed recycling and blue bin collections have been addressed in a statement issued today (August 13).
Thanet council says: “Since the start of August, due to a shortage of available drivers, paper and cardboard collections have been impacted.
“Crews have been directed to prioritise the collection of general waste and food waste. Mixed recycling and blue bin collections are still going ahead but may be delayed. Catch up collections will take place over the weekend.
“Households that have had a missed paper and cardboard collection this week, or last week, are being asked to put it back out on their next scheduled paper and cardboard collection day. It will not be collected until then.
“As always, on recycling day, if there is additional paper and cardboard left beside the bin or bag (side waste) it will still be collected. There is no need to report these missed collections.
“We are working hard to resolve the driver shortage issue. This is something that other councils are also experiencing.
“We would like to apologise for the disruption and the impact this issue is having on our residents.”
Cllr Helen Whitehead said on social media that there are seven drivers down due to illness.
The concentration on general and food waste comes after almost 4,000 calls to customer services related to missed bin collections between April and June this year. Residents have been complaining of maggots and rats due to uncollected food and black waste.
To try and tackle the problems two new collection rounds were added on July 1 for six months at a cost of £188k for vehicles, crew, fuel and vehicle servicing.
Issues began on 13 April, when 27,000 isle homes switched to the Simpler Recycling Service (SRS) started.
Councillor Brenda Rogers, Deputy Leader of the Conservative Group and Shadow Cabinet member for Operational Services at Thanet council, has criticised the latest disruption to Thanet’s waste service, with paper and cardboard collections now being affected by a shortage of available drivers.
In June, opposition councillors from across the political spectrum came together to bring a cross-party motion to council, calling for urgent scrutiny of the problems residents were experiencing with missed and incomplete collections.
The council subsequently acknowledged that the service had not been at the standard residents expected and implemented further changes, putting additional resources into the service and reviewing its operation.
Cllr Rogers says that at the Overview and scrutiny meeting on 14th July, councillors were told that the problems would be resolved in about two weeks but adds that residents are still waiting.
She said: “I have every sympathy for the crews and officers who are working under significant pressure. Driver shortages, sickness and difficult working conditions are genuine challenges and staff working on the frontline should not be blamed for them.
“But residents are now very angry, having experienced months of disruption to their waste and recycling collections, and councillors are bearing the brunt of this.
“Residents don’t need another explanation explaining further delays in their collections, they need to know when this will be resolved and when they can have confidence in this service again.”
Household Waste and Recycling collection staff are contracted to work 37 hours a week. For a combination of reasons including the increasing number of dwellings and increased food waste participation, many of the rounds deployed now require more than the daily average (7 hours 24 minutes) to complete the work allocated each day. The demand for a longer working week affects drivers more than loaders because drivers often release their crews ahead of the final run to the transfer station in Hersden to empty the vehicle at the end of the working day.
Until recently and in response to that need, crews and particularly drivers on the standard refuse and recycling rounds have been electing to work overtime offered by their supervisors, bringing their working hours up to between 8.5 and 9.0 hours per day. Until March 2026 a 44 hour working week for drivers was not uncommon.
However, since the scheme was introduced there has been a reduction in the acceptance of overtime when offered to household collection crews. In March there was around £10,250 overtime pay. In June this had dropped to £3,889.
The whole of Ffant should be in the bin
Why is all the focus on kerbside collections? Why not provide skips where we can donate our recycling materials at our own convenience?
And why must the council foot the bill when most of the recycling waste is generated by supermarket chains and tax-dodging online giants?
That’s a brilliant idea I think not! Do you honestly believe such bins would only received waste paper. This is Thanet we are talking about. What’s your obsession with blaming supermarkets and derogatory remarks about on line giants? Smell the coffee please.
Blaming supermarkets for generating waste is not an obsession, it’s a statement of fact. Are you too young to remember the days when we rinsed and returned our milk bottles, received deposit back for beer bottles, when the Boys’ Brigade collected old newspapers from our doorsteps, when we borrowed cardboard boxes from supermarkets instead of disposing of them after being used once. We didn’t need to think about recycling because we re-used things repeatedly.
And out of interest, are you being paid by Amazon to defend their practices? Or are you just an admirer of their business model and attitude?
Do you think shops and houses didn’t used to have any rubbish? My late mother-in-law lived in a small Scottish fishing village most of her life, and until well into the 1960’s a truck used to collect everything from shops and houses once a week, and then tip it into the sea. When things are done properly, they have the potential to be so much better today – as I (and probably you) have seen in other places, both at home and abroad. Sadly, TDC only know how to do things improperly.
The article is about paper and cardboard, not rubbish. In the past, people kept cardboard boxes in their lofts or re-circulated them for re-use. My main complaint is about Amazon, an organisation with no presence in Thanet, hence pays no local taxes, yet it bombards us with cardboard packaging and expects the public to pick up the bill.
They do, it’s called the recycling centre? Can take your paper/cardboard there as well as general waste although I do not believe they have recycling for the items that go in the blue bins.
…and how do pedestrians and cyclists access this facility?
Councils should provide free collections for any household that doesn’t own a car.
They put HVO in the waste trucks to reduce the Council’s greenhouse gas emissions.
Seems slightly counter productive to then have hundreds of people driving to the waste and recycling centre to drop off their rubbish.
Excuses, excuses, excuses.
thats a great idea about skips being provided for waste paper , but the last time i saw them in tescos and ramsgate town , they had bike frames , old clothes , broken toys , and christ knows what else in them , i just dont think the locals have the mindset for recycling
The reason these skips are abused is that they are usually put in isolated, unsupervised locations. If they were put in lockable compounds, like council premises, or within the direct line of sight of supermarket security staff, it would be a different matter.
How many people live near council premises or supermarkets with security in Thanet? No, TDC just need to do what WE pay them to do.
Actually you have a choice with Amazon to hide your package or in original package so no it’s not Amazon fault it’s down to each individual I know I use Amazon regularly. I also buy from other places that use cardboard boxes that’s to package them I don’t have a problem with my boxes if not collected I will burn them simple
Labour are proving themselves to be utterly incapable of running our Council. This total service meltdown during a heatwave at the same time as they have burnt through over £8m of financial reserves to a point where their own Finance Chief is saying the Council is at risk of bankruptcy. Uncollected food waste, litter all over the streets.
They have utterly failed the people of Thanet whilst hiking our Council Tax every year as much as they can.
Let’s not forget their first action when they took power back in 2023 was to award themselves a backdated 10% increase to their Councillor allowances.
Utter shambles. If they can’t sort this out, they should do the right thing and step down.
Albon must get the boot , he is useless
Yes, but the rot starts at the top. Does anybody think RE has shown himself fit to be running the council the last three years?
Our address in Ramsgate has had 3 fortnightly cardboard collections missed, as have the rest of the street and the streets near to ours (I see this when I walk the dog). We ended up taking ours to the tip. So this is not just since the beginning of August.
I think a lot of civilians are missing the point that money is not the panacea to all civic woes. The clamour for tidier streets vis-à-vis the willingness of anyone on here to take a hard, mucky and stinking 9hr per day job in brutal heat with the expectation or more aptly, pressure of OT on top, is comically unbalanced.
Civilians need to do their part and take waste to the tip more often, it will help those poor binmen to manage the backlog instead of wasting time in a Costa Coffee as a narrow minded Boomer keyboard warrior lamenting a funny smell from a nearby Palantin bin.
I’m also excess cash has afforded some like those here a cushy life as a scornful and bitter onlooker.
My past jobs have included cleaning toilets, sweeping floors and washing up. That doesn’t mean that I believe that dustman should do their job… and I mean properly, sweeping up afterwards! Standards have fallen everywhere in this country: I was in Normandy over the weekend, and the roads, towns and even the public toilets were immaculate.
Interestingly, TDC received over £1.3m in funding from the “Extended Producer Responsibility” funding which is exactly what you describe.
They, however, chose not to ringfence it for waste collection and just absorbed it into overall annual budgets.
Have they tried not having a shortage of drivers? That would help.
I was talking to some dustman the other week. They told me the main reasons nobody wants to do the overtime is. The Managers keep forgetting to pay them. Maybe the Managers should roll their sleeves up and do a few bins to show them how easy it is, to get the work done in time. I bet you don’t see much of them at 5.30 in the morning?
Lack of Drivers, so if the council contractors had lack of plumbers could they leave leaks for weeks on end within their properties
Sure, let’s just not have a shortage of anything, where the provision is the responsibility of someone else other than yourselves.
Grow up.
This problem has been going on for months. Surely WE who pay for services have every right to complaint when OUR paid civil servants don’t deliver?
If they paid the workers overtime this wouldn’t be a problem but after 37hrs they don’t get paid would you work and not get paid I don’t think so plus if they supplied them with lighter summer clothes they wouldn’t get hot and end up going sick they have also offered to go in 2hrs early in the extreme heat conditions but was told no what else can they do I feel for the workers tbh
Pathetic more excuses there are large
Big bins full to the top outside spoons all week still not empty thanet has the record for laziness in sweepers bin collection beach cleaning
Can go on think its time to stop paying council tax they are not doing there jobs at all weres the security and police on friday sat ngts after midnight at harbour all drug dealers with pathetic drunk locals not a police or patrol in site wake up
August? It has been going on all year long-very rarely has the paper & card been collected the same day as the brown & blue bins. Long before the new
Took my uncollected waste to the tip earlier this week and had a chat with the staff there – nice people, very helpful, and a good attitude. Made the visit more pleasant than the eventual bin smell caused by indignation!
Not sure I can manage that from Birchington on my bicycle.
Surely it’s only about three or four miles to the tip and you can attach a trailer to your bike if you’re feeling fit enough. But be prepared for disappointment when you are turned away at your destination
The challenge would be getting there; aren’t a bucket load of roads closed off with the only access being from the Spitfire museum?