Due to the extreme heavy snow and unsafe working conditions last week, South Hams District Council were unable to make many of the refuse and recycling collections in the District.

The council missed three full days of collections, which means that it is not possible to go back and complete a catch up service to all of those residents without severely disrupting this week’s collections.

Therefore the council has decided that from Monday, a normal refuse and recycling service will be reinstated and they are asking all residents to put out their collections as normal this week.

For those residents whose collections were missed, the council asked them to follow the guidance below:

“Brown Bin and Recycling week - If your brown bin collection and recycling bag collection was missed during the extreme weather last week please can we ask that you put it out on your next normal brown bin and recycling collection day. This allows us to make sure that we can recycle as normal.

“However, if this means that you have extra food waste that you cannot store until your next brown bin collection, you can put this into your grey bin, or in bags next to your grey bin, for this week. Unfortunately this means that the contents will not be recycled.

“Grey Bin Week - If your grey bin collection was missed during the extreme weather last week please can you keep your missed waste until your next grey bin collection and place any bags that do not fit in your bin next to your bin. It will all be taken when your grey bin is next emptied.

“The council office will be open as usual on Monday morning. The senior leadership team of the council would like to extend their heartfelt thanks to the 200 staff who continued to work from home on Thursday and Friday, and also many who continued to work over the weekend.

“All of our office-based staff have laptops with telephone headsets, which allows them to work from any location, meaning that staff were able to keep safe and warm at home, while continuing to provide a good level of customer service despite the offices being closed.”

The council would like to thank all residents for their co-operation in getting the service back to normal.