SLOUGH residents have shared their concerns over flytipping as bin collections have been changed from weekly to biweekly.

From June 26, the grey refuse bins and the red recycling bins are being collected on alternate weeks.

Leader of Slough Council, Councillor Dexter Smith, said the new collection plans are an “opportunity to address the need to double recycling rate to meet government targets”.

Residents have shared their concerns about the new biweekly collection plan, suggesting it will increase fly-tipping, bins overflowing and unwanted insects.

Commenting on a Slough Observer article, Krisztina Nagy said: “I don’t really get it. My family of 4 can easily fill one bin by the end of week. Now the bins will be overloaded, rubbish will be everywhere on the ground.... not to add the heat, so it will be more insects.”

Another resident agreed saying: “Unfortunately, I think people will just starting fly-tipping rubbish wherever they can instead of doing the right thing and taking it to the tip or sorting out their recycling.”   

The biweekly collection has also been introduced in an attempt to increase recycling, but residents "can't see how this will work".

"What will also happen is that MORE contaminated recycling waste will be put in the RED bin. This means that the WHOLE LOAD will be rejected and sent to landfill or incineration", one resident said.

Councillor Dexter Smith added: “The council’s finances are recovering but we cannot swerve our responsibility to save money where we can and this change in the service – bringing Slough in line with the vast majority of authorities across the country who have fortnightly collections – is part of this.”

Speaking about money savings, residents have shared concerns about this issue.

Lea Turkington said: “The amount this is ‘saving’ the council is around £700k a year. Considering they are still £305 MILLION in debt it would take them 500 years to recover the loss through ‘savings’ from moving to fortnightly bin collections. It is unlikely they will save as much as they think as they will have to deal with increased fly tipping.”

The council has reassured residents that "the actual days of the week bins are collected will remain the same" – so if a resident currently has their bin collected on a Tuesday it will remain on a Tuesday but with the grey bin one week and the red bin the next.

The change only affects residents with grey and red bins; flats with large communal bins will keep weekly collections as the separation of waste and recycling is more complicated and less easy to control with communal bins.

Residents can look up which week is which bin on the council’s website: slough.gov.uk/binday