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19
Aug
Senior councillor apologises over missed bins in Harrogate district
A senior councillor has apologised after a large increase in missed bins in the Harrogate district.
In a performance report before North Yorkshire Council’s executive today (August 19), the authority reported that the number of missed collections in North Yorkshire increased from 3,665 in the final quarter of last year to 6,863 in the first quarter of 2025/26 — an 87% rise.
The report said that reason for the increase was a “higher number of missed bins” in the Harrogate area, which was due to new collection rounds introduced in April.
Cllr Richard Foster, the Conservative executive member for managing our environment at the council, apologised for the increase at a meeting in Northallerton this morning.
He said:
In the Harrogate area, we have had some issues with rounds and we can only apologise to residents for that.
Cllr Foster added that lessons had been learned over the rollout and promised that issues with the service would be “ironed out”.
He said:
We are on the four-day week in Scarborough, that is our next big piece of work. But then we are going to take a rest on new schemes to make sure everything is in place and that people are getting a regular bin collection that they expect.
We have lessons to learn and a lot of lessons have already been learned. Moving forward, we should do it smoother.
The council introduced new collection rounds in April, which included a four-day week for refuse workers and an end to Monday collections.
In a statement issued at the time, the authority said the decision to end Monday collections was part of its harmonisation agenda across North Yorkshire and would ensure the service “remains as efficient as possible”.
Karl Battersby, corporate director for environment at North Yorkshire Council, told today’s meeting that Harrogate was chosen as the first area for the changes.
He said:
When we made the changes, we chose Harrogate as the first area specifically because we knew that would be our area of biggest challenge in terms of the nature of the place and the issues with the services.
We are intending to go back and do some further tweaks and changes, probably in October this year to deal with some of those more local issues.
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