A FLEET of 15 new bin lorries are arriving in Bromsgrove to keep household waste and recycling collections running smoothly.
The modern vehicles are replacing older refuse trucks that have reached the end of their service life.
Coun Karen May, Leader of Bromsgrove District Council, said: “Good planned investments in our vehicle fleet help ensure reliable bin collections and efficient services for our residents.”
Bromsgrove’s fleet empties around 2.6million bins a year across the 84-square-mile district.
Refuse collection vehicles typically need replacing every seven years to maintain reliability.
To support that, the district council allocates a budget of about £4.5million to a strategic vehicle replacement programme.
The new bin lorries also prompted the replacement of Bromsgrove’s wheeled household bins, as the district had been the last in the country still using a legacy bin design that had become incompatible with modern UK-standard lorries.
Those bin swaps are almost complete, and, like the bins, new bin lorries have been coming in to replace their obsolete counterparts area-by-area.
The council is now gearing up to write to its Garden Waste customers to arrange their new brown bins in the new year, as the last leg of the big bin changeover.
Coun May added: “We had to replace the bins because new trucks simply can’t empty those old ones.
“But it will benefit taxpayers because it brings us fully in line with the national standard across the board.
“That’s more efficient than before, and when you’re going round a big district emptying millions of bins, efficiency really matters.”
The old trucks are sold for parts and scrap, with the proceeds going back into the public purse to reduce pressure on council tax.
