Changes to Household Waste Recycling Sites confirmed

The County Council has responded to current and anticipated demand at its Household Waste Recycling Sites by bringing forward summer opening hours and trialling a booking system at six of its busiest sites.

Due to the increased demand in recent weeks, despite calls for residents to store waste where possible and only make essential journeys, West Sussex County Council has decided to bring forward summer opening hours at all of its Household Waste Recycling Sites from Friday 12 March. Recently several sites have experienced queuing traffic, long waiting times and disruption to local residents, businesses and the highway network.

Sussex Police have been called to sites due to the number of vehicles joining the queues and have closed sites in order to relieve the problems. It is hoped that by extending the opening hours this will be avoided, but residents are reminded not to turn up to sites before they are due to open, as some sites have seen visitors queuing up to an hour before the opening time.

In addition, the trial of a new booking system has been confirmed for residents visiting Bognor Regis, Crawley, Horsham, Littlehampton, Shoreham-By-Sea and Worthing HWRSs.

From Monday 29 March residents planning to visit these sites will need to pre-book their slot in advance, either online or by telephone. The trial is designed to allow residents to safely dispose of their recycling and waste, limit their waiting times at these sites and help reduce traffic disruption. When live, slots can be booked up to 14 days in advance and residents will be able to make one trip in a week (Monday-Sunday).

Residents are asked to use a site local to them and not travel further afield to dispose of their recycling and waste. It is also recommended that residents continue to store waste where possible and to make full use of their regular kerbside collection services.

West Sussex County Council Cabinet Member for the Environment, Deborah Urquhart, said: “While we remain under national lockdown conditions residents have been encouraged to store their recycling or waste if it is safe to do so. However, our sites have become increasingly busy recently and we anticipate that the lifting of lockdown restrictions may exacerbate this. In order to help mitigate against this and improve our residents’ experience of visiting our sites, we are bringing forward our summer opening hours and also trialling a new booking system for some of our busiest sites.”

“Over the past few weeks we have seen a surge in visits to our sites, which has unfortunately led to some being closed temporarily in order to reduce the impact on local roads. This meant that valuable Police time was used up diverting traffic and assisting site staff. By trialling the new booking system we hope to avoid this.”

Once the booking system is available, residents will be able to book a visit within a timeslot online, by visiting the West Sussex website or by calling the contact centre.