South Hams District Council have been explaining to residents why, when it is reintroduced in Spring next year, garden waste collections will be a subscription-only service. There will be one final collection before the service stops over the winter on October

People have experienced disruption to their garden waste service. This has been mainly due to the shortages of drivers and sickness which has led to not being able to provide garden collections crews each day.

This has been reviewed and the decision was made on September 22 to stop collections on October 31 and reintroduce the service on a subscription basis in Spring 2023. This allows officers to stabilise Waste and Recycling collections and avoid missed collections.

If you no longer use this service you can have your brown bin by the council and those wanting to subscribe can do so between November and January. If you don’t want to subscribe you can either compost your garden waste or take it to a recycling centre. You are asked not to burn your garden waste for safety and nuisance reasons.

For all residents still on the co-mingled weekly recycling collection (those who have the new containers and reusable sacks but not including food waste collections or old style recycling sack collections -blue and clear) they are working to complete the rollout the full Devon Aligned recycling service to all residents in the District as soon as they can. This service includes the boxes, reusable sack and the food waste caddy on a weekly collection. They will inform those residents affected when the full service will be operational from the kerbside.

If the properties are rented, they suggest you speak to the landlord (assuming it is the same for all properties), ask them to pay for the subscription, then divide the cost between the residents who want to use the service.

If the communal area is maintained by residents, there is usually a volunteer group who manages this. It would be their decision whether or not to subscribe to the service. This would involve taking ownership of the bin, making sure it is secured safely between collections and putting it out on collection day at the correct location.

If as a resident you have access to your own garden, the subscription would be your choice as the occupier - you can choose to subscribe or not depending on your circumstances.