Nearly 46,000 households in Sittingbourne and across the borough will keep their usual bin collection day this month, but residents are urged to start putting rubbish out by 5:30am as new lorry routes begin on 20 July. Swale Borough Council and its contractor Suez are updating the rounds to make collections more reliable and let crews support each other on the road.
Those with a day or week change—around 2.5% of homes, mostly in Boughton and Courtenay, Teynham and Lynsted, West Downs, and Queenborough and Halfway—will get a letter this week by first-class post or hand delivery. The council advises that even if the day stays the same, “your bin might be collected earlier or later in the day than you are used to.” Garden waste rounds are unaffected.
The shake-up is the second in less than two years. When Suez took over the contract from Biffa in March 2024, missed collections piled up, with more than 36,000 reports logged by that July. In September 2024 the council changed collection days for 9,300 households after a review of vehicle access and property numbers. The current changes are part of the same drive to stabilise the service.
Suez is running the borough’s waste programme as part of an eight-year, £152 million Mid-Kent Waste Partnership deal shared with Maidstone and Ashford councils, serving about 460,000 residents. For the first month after 20 July, extra staff will be on standby, crews will mix to keep local knowledge, and supervisors will watch rounds closely to catch problems early.
Anyone unsure of their collection day can check the council’s website for updates.
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