East Hampshire District Council’s garden waste service is to undergo a “root and branch re-organisation” to improve its efficiency and capacity.

The announcement was made by council leader Cllr Richard Millard, who said the changes would enable more households to receive collections – but warned a total restructure of rounds meant collection days may change.

The garden waste service is a paid-for kerbside collection of green waste and grass clippings, but has been experiencing difficulties in recent months, including repeated missed deliveries.

To address these issues, the council has conducted a thorough review of the service, and has made significant changes to meet demand.

These include the introduction of a third collection lorry, which will increase capacity by 50 per cent, as well as a complete re-organisation of the rounds to ensure crews are collecting roughly the same amount of garden waste each. 

This means customers may see changes to their collection day. But despite the inconvenience, Cllr Millard believes the changes are necessary to get the service “flying again”.

The new service will start in April and will consolidate its existing customers before expanding to include more customers, on a phased basis, over the ensuing months, with the aim of reaching full capacity over the summer.

The council will contact customers to inform them of the changes and provide an estimated timeline.

Cllr Millard expressed his delight at the revamped service, stating it would be “slicker, bigger and more efficient, emptying more brown bins per day than ever before”. 

He emphasised the changes had been made  to make the service “bigger, better and more efficient”, and that the council had “pumped in the money needed” to ensure it can deliver on these promises.