Waste & Recycling Delays
Residents in Cliffsend will be very aware of the significant disruption to waste and recycling collections that we have experienced over recent months.
Missed collections, rounds running several days behind schedule and waste remaining uncollected have understandably caused considerable frustration within the village. Cliffsend Parish Council has continued to raise these issues with Thanet District Council (TDC), which is responsible for household waste and recycling collections.
More recently, we have seen a noticeable improvement in collections within Cliffsend, particularly over the last week. We very much hope this is the beginning of a sustained improvement, although the Parish Council will continue to keep an eye on the situation and raise problems affecting the village where necessary.
TDC attends Cliffsend Parish Council
At our Parish Council meeting on 17th September 2026, we welcomed representatives from Thanet District Council's Cleansing Services team to discuss the problems directly with councillors and residents.
Tony Marmo, Head of Coastal and Public Realm, and Mark Greening, Waste Strategy & Planning Manager, gave a detailed presentation explaining how Thanet's waste collection service operates, what has contributed to the recent disruption and what is now being done to improve its resilience. They also took questions directly from residents.
We are very grateful to Tony and Mark for taking the time to come to Cliffsend and speak to residents face-to-face. The meeting provided a useful opportunity not only to raise the problems we have experienced locally, but also to better understand some of the wider pressures affecting the service across Thanet.
The scale of Thanet's collection service
TDC's Cleansing Services operation serves approximately 77,000 residential properties, involving around 30,400 bin and sack lifts each day.
The service has an annual operating budget of approximately £7.1 million for 2026/27, with 132 directly employed staff supported by trained agency workers. Collection vehicles operate from the Manston Road depot, with refuse collection vehicles tipping at Hersden.
Around 47,300 properties use the standard collection arrangements, with alternate-weekly refuse and recycling collections and weekly food waste.
A further approximately 27,000 properties are classed as non-standard properties. These include flats, hard-to-access properties and sack collection routes which historically received weekly refuse collections.
It is this latter group that was particularly affected by the introduction of the new Simpler Recycling arrangements.
What changed in April 2026?
On 13th April 2026, TDC introduced new arrangements affecting approximately 27,000 properties as part of the Government's Simpler Recycling reforms.
Properties which had previously received weekly refuse collections moved to fortnightly alternating refuse and mixed recycling collections, alongside a weekly food waste collection.
TDC explained that six existing collection rounds were reconfigured to deliver the change using the resources available at the time. The implementation was supported by approximately £400,000 of funding, including £142,000 of grant funding. Residents affected by the changes were contacted through letter drops, vehicle information, an online collection lookup facility and the provision of starter food-waste caddies.
Unfortunately, once the new arrangements were operating, a number of problems became apparent.
Why have collections been delayed?
TDC explained that there has not been one single cause of the disruption. Instead, a number of operational issues have combined to place significant pressure on the service.
More waste than anticipated
One of the most significant problems was the amount of refuse being presented for collection.
TDC explained that the assumptions initially made about participation and the amount of waste that would be collected did not materialise as anticipated. On refuse weeks, the volume and weight of waste was greater than expected and could exceed the payload capacity of collection vehicles.
Once a vehicle was full, it needed to leave its route to empty before returning. This contributed to rounds not being completed within the working day, with outstanding collections then rolling over into subsequent days.
Collection routes were too widely spread
Another issue identified was the geographical layout of some of the new rounds.
The rounds had inherited existing vehicle-access boundaries rather than being designed as compact geographical areas. This meant vehicles could spend too much time travelling between different parts of a collection round rather than collecting waste.
TDC is now looking at geographically rebalancing these routes to reduce unnecessary travelling time.
Waste being presented on the wrong collection week
TDC also highlighted contamination as an issue.
For example, black sacks presented during a recycling collection cannot simply be loaded into the recycling vehicle, as this would contaminate the recycling load.
This has resulted in some sacks remaining uncollected and subsequently being reported as missed collections, even where the scheduled collection that week was for recycling rather than general refuse.
Wider pressures on the service
The problems with the new rounds have happened alongside several other pressures affecting TDC's Cleansing Services operation.
Housing growth
TDC reported that 3,397 additional dwellings have been added since 2020, with the overall increase now around 4,300 properties.
This means considerably more properties are being collected from without an equivalent historic increase in collection capacity. TDC's presentation states that an additional collection round is needed to provide sufficient operational buffer capacity.
Driver availability and working hours
Driver availability has also been a significant issue.
TDC explained that reduced uptake of overtime, combined with drivers reaching their contracted 37 hours earlier on Fridays, had contributed to missed routes specifically in Ramsgate and Cliffsend.
The service also experienced a significant driver shortage during the school summer holidays – something TDC advised was experienced by a number of councils. Driver recruitment campaigns subsequently took place during August.
TDC has also moved from paper logbooks to digital tachographs, allowing GB Domestic driving and break requirements to be more strictly enforced.
Vehicle availability
The specialist vehicles required for household waste collections cannot necessarily be replaced or supplemented quickly.
TDC advised that lead times for specialist refuse collection vehicles have increased to around 18–20 months.
Vehicles are also subject to strict statutory six-week preventative maintenance inspections and LOLER inspections. While these are necessary safety requirements, they can reduce the number of spare vehicles available at any particular time and therefore reduce the service's ability to absorb breakdowns or other disruption.
What has TDC done to improve the situation?
Additional resources have already been introduced in an attempt to stabilise collections and clear the recurring backlog.
TDC allocated £188,000 over six months to provide two temporary additional rounds.
An additional food waste round, costing £81,000, was introduced on 1st July 2026 to relieve pressure on both standard and Simpler Recycling food-waste collections.
An additional standard refuse round, costing £107,000, followed on 6th July 2026, with a dedicated 26-tonne refuse collection vehicle and three-person crew. This was introduced to absorb additional workload and support refuse collections under the new arrangements.
TDC advised that the £188,000 was funded through a one-off transfer from historic discretionary underspends rather than creating an ongoing structural budget deficit.
From 24 rounds to 26 – and what happens next
TDC provided some particularly useful additional detail at our meeting about how collection rounds are now being organised.
The service previously operated 24 collection rounds. This has now increased to 26 rounds, with 25 effectively operating as collection rounds and a further relief round available to respond to missed collections and provide additional resilience.
However, the longer-term intention is not simply to keep adding rounds.
TDC intends to streamline and geographically rebalance the collection routes, reducing unnecessary travelling time and making individual rounds more efficient.
The intended model is therefore to operate 24 streamlined regular collection rounds, supported by two relief rounds.
Those relief rounds are important because they provide capacity within the service to respond when something goes wrong – for example where a round cannot be completed, a vehicle is unavailable or additional capacity is needed – rather than outstanding collections continually rolling into the following day's workload.
This is consistent with TDC's wider review, which is looking at geographically optimising collection rounds and providing additional permanent capacity and resilience within the service.
Independent review and longer-term changes
The work does not end with the temporary additional rounds.
TDC's recovery programme shows that emergency rounds were deployed in July, followed by driver recruitment during August.
During September, an independent review by Canenco and a separate Head of Service review were completed, with a report being produced for TDC's Cabinet/Corporate Management Team.
Implementation of the findings from that work is expected to begin from October 2026 onwards.
The service review is recommending a restructure intended to provide greater resilience at strategic, operational management and operational delivery levels, including additional rounds being provided on a permanent basis.
Other longer-term measures identified by TDC include geographical optimisation of rounds, reviewing drivers' contracted hours and improvements to welfare facilities at the Manston Road depot. TDC also intends to work with Town and Parish Councils on local bag and food-caddy collection hubs.
Recycling is increasing
Although the disruption to collections has understandably been the most visible part of the changes for residents, TDC also presented figures showing an increase in recycling.
According to the presentation, Thanet's recycling rate increased from 35.2% in Quarter 2 of 2025 to 39.7% in Quarter 2 of 2026.
The amount of household food waste separately collected also increased by 59% year-on-year.
TDC also reported that more than 98% of residual waste is diverted to the Allington Energy Facility, rather than being sent to landfill.
Is the situation improving in Cliffsend?
Encouragingly, we have seen a noticeable improvement in Cliffsend over the last week or so.
After several months of disruption, that is very welcome.
We recognise the frustration that the problems have caused residents and we don't want to suggest that a week of improved collections means all of the underlying issues have disappeared. However, the improvement we are currently seeing, alongside the additional resources and changes described by TDC, gives us some reason to hope that the service is beginning to stabilise.
We very much hope that continues.
Cliffsend Parish Council will continue to monitor the situation locally and raise problems affecting the village with TDC where necessary.
Thank you to TDC
Finally, we would again like to thank Tony Marmo and Mark Greening from Thanet District Council for attending our meeting.
Residents have understandably had a lot of questions and concerns following several months of disruption. We therefore appreciate TDC taking the time to come to Cliffsend, explain what has happened, acknowledge the problems with the service and answer residents' questions directly.
TDC's presentation also included an apology for the inconvenience caused by the disruption to its Waste Cleansing Service.
There is considerably more information in the presentation delivered to the Parish Council, and we would encourage residents who are interested in the detail behind the recent problems and the work now underway to read it.
Thanet District Council – Cleansing Services Performance
Presentation to Cliffsend Parish Council – 17th September 2026