Southampton glass collections cancelled over staff shortages

According to the city council, this is due to the ongoing national shortage of drivers.  

This comes after the services in parts of the Itchen and Sholing ward were omitted on Monday, October 25. 

Glass recycling collections have been cancelled for the rest of the week to ensure crews can still collect household waste and recycling. 

READ MORE: Glass collections in Southampton CANCELLED as council struggles with staff shortages

Cabinet member for customer service and transformation, Cllr Rob Harwood, said: “We apologise for any inconvenience caused. We’re doing all we can to provide city wide daily waste and recycling collections as normal.

"We expect our long-term driver recruitment plan will provide a return to normal scheduled collections in the near future.

"We’d like to thank residents for their patience during this time and would encourage the use of recycling banks wherever possible.”

Here are the areas that will be affected and when. 

Wednesday, October 27 

Services have been omitted in the above areas in Portswood, Highfield, Portswood Park, Bevois Mount and near Bevois Town.

Roads in Hampton Park and near Highfield, close to the University of Southampton will not have glass collections today.

Thursday, October 28

Collections will not take place in the above roads in Upper Shirley tomorrow. 

Roads in Coxford, Old Shirley and Aldermoor will not have a glass collection on Thursday.

Friday, October 30

Roads in Millbrook and Freemantle will be affected on Friday.

In response to the cancellations, Cllr Kaur, leader of the Labour group said: “Residents in my own ward, Shirley, are very frustrated by the handling of the situation.

"Southampton’s Conservative council can only go so far in blaming the national driver shortage, which was caused and made worse by their own Conservative government, for our continual missed waste collections.

"Other local councils have faced similar problems but have found ways to fix the problem, it’s clear here in Southampton, the Conservatives are still struggling to manage the basics.”    

The council has said it is busy recruiting new drivers to new posts created to "relieve pressure" on collections in the future.

Glass recycling banks are located around the city and are being collected as normal.

Their locations can be found here: southampton.gov.uk/bins-recycling/recycling/recycling-banks/