From the 1st December Acocks Green and all the other Wards in Yardley, Hall Green and Hodge Hill will move to a Ward based refuse collection service. This means crews working in Acocks Green will just work in our Ward and will not work in different parts of the City on different days. This will help crews to get to know their patch better and deliver a better service.

Another important change which was implimented on the 1st of November is that crews will work – and be paid for – a standard day. This will be 9.125 hours, so that each member of staff will work 4 days a week. This enables maximum efficiency for operation of the vehicle fleet which will continue to work 5 days a week. Collections will take place until around 3pm each day.

Working a standard day means the incentive to rush the round, in order to finish work early is removed. Now when they finish the round, the crew will be assigned other tasks until their hours have been worked. Many residents have complained to me that the speed of the collection increases the amount of refuse which is left in the streets after the collection. I will be interested to hear views on whether the new system has led to an improvement in coming weeks.

Finally, the green waste collection will take its normal winter break soon. Final collections will be on Friday 25th November and they will restart on Monday 6th February next year.