Steve Read, Managing Director of Somerset Waste Partnership writes: -
Having caught up with delayed refuse and recycling collections may I thank local people for their understanding and support over the past weeks. The length and severity of the bad weather was unusual. We were affected by icy roads before Christmas and conditions worsened in the first two weeks of January.
By the time the weather improved, despite working everywhere and every day we could, we lost the equivalent of five day's collections. Our collection crews, many of whom had already been working weekends following the Christmas bank holidays, did a great job to catch up.
Our priority will always be the safety of the public, their property and our crews. With compacted ice on roads and pavements the job of collecting was much slower. One refuse vehicle was actually stranded in a country lane for over a week! In such conditions we must rely on the judgement of the crew as to whether it is safe to collect from a particular road.
When snow disrupts public transport a cancelled bus service is lost. With refuse collections waste obviously does not disappear and accumulates as time goes on. The process of catching up is a big challenge.
We aimed to collect as much as possible from scheduled rounds, then worked long days and weekends to revisit areas that had been inaccessible before. Extra trucks were drafted in and the garden waste service was suspended to prioritise clearing refuse. Despite this, it took a tiring week of applying every available resource to bring us up to date.
Hopefully we will not see the same difficulties for some time but, if we do, please look out for updates in the press and radio and check our website for daily updates.
Steve Read, Managing Director
Somerset Waste Partnership
