Residents have been asked to bear with the City Council as garden-waste collections become the latest area to be hit by Covid-related staff absences.
Like many local authorities across the country, Nottingham has been significantly affected by the pandemic over the past 16 months but frontline services – including bin collections, street cleaning and parks maintenance – are now becoming very thinly-stretched.
Garden waste in particular has been impacted today (Thursday) and is likely to remain disrupted for the next few days.
The Council is advising that all residents place their brown-lid bin out as usual, but if it is not emptied then take it back in until the next scheduled garden collection.
Councillor Sally Longford, Deputy Leader of Nottingham City Council and Portfolio Holder for Waste Services, said: “I know how frustrating it is when bins aren’t collected and we’re really sorry that some people in the city are going to be impacted in the coming days.
“Our frontline teams have worked so hard during the pandemic to keep essential services running in the face of increasingly difficult circumstances. This has routinely involved them having to stop certain tasks, often with very little notice, in order to cover colleagues in another area.
“Absence levels in some service areas are running higher than previously. This is related to rising case numbers across the city, and our waste team currently has 10% of staff off because of Covid-related issues.
“For our bin crews, people spending more time at home has led to increased volumes of household and garden waste. When teams are then hit by Covid or self-isolation, we draft in staff from our Street Scene teams who aren’t familiar with bin rounds. This can unfortunately lead to missed bins, as well as having a knock-on effect on their own area of work such as grass cutting or street cleaning.
“There are some things residents can do to help, however, by reducing waste through composting, not cutting their grass for the time-being, putting bins out at the right time and taking some items such as garden waste to our recycling centre at Lenton.”
More information on waste services and bin collections, with the impact of Covid, is available here.