Torbay Council and SWISCo want to thank all Torbay residents for your continued patience as we continue to catch up on your waste and recycling collections.

More than 74,000 collections – the vast majority - have been caught up with so far following the recent positive COVID case amongst SWISCo staff which led to two-thirds of SWISCo’s waste and recycling staff needing to self-isolate. SWISCo has been responsible for waste and recycling collections since 1st July and is a company wholly owned by Torbay Council.

We therefore hope to be back to normal collection days by Monday next week.

Councillor Mike Morey, Cabinet Member for Infrastructure, Environment and Culture for Torbay Council, said: “Due to so many staff being required to self-isolate in line with national COVID guidance, we lost a total of six working days, 20 crews per day and a total of 84,000 scheduled collections were missed.

“The welfare of our staff is paramount to us and following the extremely hard work put in by our crews including additional hours, they have reduced this down to 10,000 outstanding collections still to be completed. We have deployed extra crews on board and in a minority of instances we have had to use different vehicles for the collections in order to speed up and ensure that the catch up process doesn’t carry on for several more weeks. If it is necessary, to achieve our target, we will undertake weekend working.

“So please bear with us – we are very nearly there. This has been an extraordinary situation and a major service disruption in what continues to be a very challenging year. We have had to work in different ways, but we are confident that the remaining missed collections will be caught up and will be completed over the next few days.

“Please continue to leave your waste and recycling out for collection, including the weekend, and we will get it as soon as we can.”