Changes to Sort It Centres

South Gloucestershire Council provides four Sort It Centres at Mangotsfield, Stoke Gifford, Thornbury and Yate for the collection of household waste which are operated by SITA.

The Council Savings Plan sets out how the council plans to deliver £36M of savings between now and 2020. After careful consideration, the Council believes that some of the required savings in the overall Council Savings Plan could be made by varying the service provided at our Sort It Centres with a view to saving £400,000 a year from April 2016. We would therefore value your views on the following proposals.
Many of the proposals we are consulting on have been adopted by other local councils.

Further information is available from: www.southglos.gov.uk/consultation or by emailing: consultation@southglos.gov.uk or phone: 01454 868000.

Your use of Sort It Centres

Limiting business use

Our Sort It Centres are for household waste only. Businesses must use waste transfer stations and pay for the disposal of their waste.We estimate that a 5% reduction in the number of visitors using vans and trailers could reduce our running costs by £75,000 per year.

To prevent business use of our sites and aid monitoring and enforcement, we would like to clarify the definition of vans and trailers  and introduce checks for the following types of vehicles:

Any vehicle with any of the following features: no rear side facing windows, no rear seats, an open back or a back which is separate to the main cab area. This includes:
 • Vans of any size (including minibuses, campervans and cars with no rear side facing windows)
 • 4x4 or people carrier (MPV) without rear seats and/or windows or with an open back
 • Pick up trucks (including double cabs)
 • Trucks, flat bed lorries, box vans and agricultural vehicles
 • Trailers and horse boxes more than 2metres in length (excluding tow hook)
Please note: vehicles over 3.5 tonnes are not allowed on site.

As businesses mostly bring their waste in vans and trailers, it is proposed these types of vehicles will need a permit to use the Sort It Centre. This will allow residents with a van or trailer to use the centres to dispose of their own household waste, whilst keeping businesses out. This will reduce congestion at the centres and means that businesses contribute to the cost of disposing of their waste. We provide separate facilities for businesses to use at the transfer stations next door to Mangotsfield and Yate Sort It Centres.

To apply for a permit, van and trailer users will need to pre-register and provide proof of residency, as well as vehicle make, colour and registration number. They will be required to submit a copy of the Vo5 and if the vehicle is registered to a business then a permit will be declined. It is also proposed that van and trailer users will be restricted to the number of times they can visit sites in a set period.

Residents access

The council provides Sort It Centres so that our residents can dispose of their household waste, paid for through the council tax you pay. Unfortunately we get a significant numbers of users from outside South Gloucestershire using the sites who do not contribute to the running costs of the service or pay for the disposal of their waste.

To tackle this issue, we are proposing to introduce a system where residents will need to pre-register before they can use the sites. This will enable us to  better control access to the sites and to check that only South Gloucestershire residents are using them. Sites in neighbouring council areas already operate this system.

It is proposed that residents will need to provide proof of residency, as well as vehicle make, colour and registration number. On entering the sites each vehicle registration would be checked  against the database and if not registered, they will be asked to leave.  Each address will be restricted to registering two vehicles (only 1 of which can be a van).

We estimate that a 5% reduction in the number of visitors using our sites could reduce our running costs by £75,000 per year.

Charging for non-household items

Sort It Centres are provided so that residents can dispose of their household waste (which is defined by law). There are certain types of non-household waste that the council does not have to collect, but that residents would wish to recycle or dispose of safely. This includes;  
•  Tyres
•  DIY waste including: doors and windows, fitted kitchens, fitted wardrobes, rubble and concrete, bricks and roof tiles, plasterboard, soil from landscaping activities and any other building materials.
It currently costs us £75,000 to dispose of non-household waste.

Some of these items are currently restricted to 6 deposits a month, instead we are proposing to remove these restrictions and introduce a charge for different types of non-household waste. The types of waste and proposed charges are set out below.

•  Asbestos - £6.50 per sheet/bag
•  Plasterboard - £3.50 per sheet/bag
•  Hardcore - £2.50 per bag
•  Tyres - £1.50 each

We estimate that charging for certain types of non-household items could generate between £125,000 and £200,000 to help support the cost of delivering the service and disposal.

Changes to opening hours and days

Currently our sites operate 7 days a week and have winter opening hours of 8am to 4.30pm, October to March and summer opening hours 8.00am to 6.30pm, April to September.
All of the sites are closed Christmas Day, Boxing Day and New Year's Day.
Stoke Gifford site also closes one day a week on Wednesdays.
We are considering a number of options to reduce the opening days and hours of the sites during our less busy periods, whilst maintaining access for the vast majority of our users.

We estimate that reducing the opening hours at our sites could save between £50,000 to £100,000 per year and by reducing the opening days that our sites operate could save between £50,000 to £75,000 per year.

Your comments

This section is really important as it helps us to gain a better understanding of the needs of different service users, the views of different people and how they could be impacted by any changes. This information will remain confidential and will be used for analysis purposes only. Your personal information will not be published and individuals will not be identified.
If you are responding on behalf of an organisation you do not need to answer these questions.

Any personal information that you have supplied will be held by South Gloucestershire Council in accordance with the Data Protection Act. This information will only be used as part of this exercise and personal information will not be published or passed onto any other organisation.

Thank you for telling us your views. Please press the submit button below to send us your response.