Bulky waste collections relaunched in Northumberland - but with these restrictions

The reintroduced service will offer a smaller range of items eligible for collection, to cut out the need for two-person lifting and enable social-distancing guidance to be followed.

The council’s online booking system – https://tinyurl.com/ydxc84wr – has been changed to control the range of items which can be collected, as all pick-ups will be undertaken by one member of staff.

Plus, council employees won’t be able to enter people’s homes, so residents must ensure that, by 7am on the booked collection day, any items are put at the edge of the property, as close to the roadside as possible, without causing a hazard to pedestrians or vehicles.

Only those items which have been booked and listed for collection will be removed by teams.

Coun Glen Sanderson, the cabinet member for the environment and local services on Northumberland County Council, said he hoped normal services will resume “sooner rather than later”.

He said: “We’re very pleased to be able to restart another of our key services, following the decision to reopen our waste sites.

“We know this is a valuable service for residents, although we do ask for their understanding at this time, as we currently aren’t able to collect the whole range of items we could previously as we need to ensure enhanced safety for our staff at this time.

“If residents have large items that we can’t currently collect as they require two people to lift them, we would ask that they safely store them until we are able to resume our normal services, which will hopefully be sooner rather than later.”

Northumberland’s 12 household waste recovery centres reopened as of Monday, May 4, with reports of lengthy queues at some sites first thing in the morning.

The council’s bin collections have continued as normal during the lockdown, including garden waste – although new customers are not able to apply for a garden waste bin at this time.

A message from the Editor:

Thank you for reading this story on our website. While I have your attention, I also have an important request to make of you.

In order for us to continue to provide high quality and trusted local news on this free-to-read site, I am asking you to also please purchase a copy of our newspaper.

Our journalists are highly trained and our content is independently regulated by IPSO to some of the most rigorous standards in the world. But being your eyes and ears comes at a price. So we need your support more than ever to buy our newspapers during this crisis.

With the coronavirus lockdown having a major impact on many of our local valued advertisers - and consequently the advertising that we receive - we are more reliant than ever on you helping us to provide you with news and information by buying a copy of our newspaper.

Thank you