Sutton Council, as a member of the South London Waste Partnership working with Veolia UK, is introducing a new recycling and rubbish collection service to almost 90,000 homes in the borough. The service started Monday 3 April and for the first time offers food waste and battery and textile recycling to most households, as well as alternate weekly recycling collections and an industry-standard fortnightly rubbish collection.

In anticipation of extra demand for recycling containers we arranged for extra containers to be made available at B&Q Sutton on Saturday 8 April. Unfortunately the demand for these containers was higher than expected. We understand the frustration this must have caused. We thank everyone who waited patiently and apologise for the long queues. We also thank B&Q for their understanding.

Councillor Manuel Abellan, Vice Chair of the Environment and Neighbourhood Committee at Sutton Council said:

“We apologise unreservedly for the issues affecting the introduction of our new rubbish and recycling service. The standard of service has not been up to the quality that residents have rightly come to expect. Residents should have confidence their bin collections are taken on the correct date, and they are given the containers they need to recycle. We’ve organised extra crews and collections with Veolia to get the borough ready for this week’s collections.

“On Saturday Veolia had thousands of green boxes and a plan in place to restock as needed. The huge demand caught them off guard. It is unacceptable that people had to queue for so long. I thank residents for bearing with us while the new arrangements bed in. I encourage residents to visit www.sutton.gov.uk/recycling to access online forms to report missed deliveries, collections and to order extra recycling boxes.”

Scott Edgell, General Manager, Veolia South London said:

“We are continuing to roll out the new rubbish and recycling collection service and are working hard to complete the transition process quickly. We are working with Sutton Council and residents to resolve any issues as smoothly as possible.”

“On Saturday we arranged for residents to pick up free green recycling boxes as part of the service change. The event was very well attended with over 1150 keen recyclers taking part. We distributed 3,450 green recycling boxes to residents providing them with significant additional recycling capacity and everyone left with at least one box.

We thank people for their patience and apologise for the inconvenience the introduction of these new services has caused.”